The Valley (26 page)

‘How about the evidence against you, John?’

For the first time that morning, Max had surprised me. ‘What?’ I said.

‘The details of what you were doing with my wife on the day she disappeared – is that all in your dirty dossier?’

He must have got the reaction he wanted because he smiled. ‘You can fool yourself, John, but you can’t fool me.’

I stood up quickly and rammed the table against him, pinning him against the window. ‘Goodbye, Max,’ I said and scooped up the backpack and raced out of the cafe.

I burst onto the high street with the backpack tucked under my arm like a rugby ball, dodging around the pedestrians on the pavement. My car was less than a quarter of a mile away, and it felt good to run flat out again. I could feel my lungs sucking in the oxygen and my stride lengthening with every step as I weaved in and out of the shoppers, slowing down whenever I had to cross a side street, then sprinting away. And then I felt the familiar twinge in the ligaments of my left knee, forcing me to shorten my stride, letting my speed ebb away like a driver easing off the accelerator.

When I reached the road where my car was parked, I turned around. Max was over a hundred yards away, but easy to spot. He appeared to be jogging, until I saw how large his stride was. Each seemingly languid pace was twice the length of mine. And then I remembered how he had chased down the grouse in Scotland all those years ago, and I knew exactly what that bird must have felt as he remorselessly hunted it down.

I turned on my heels and ran towards my car. It was only sixty yards away. But this time there was no easy acceleration, just the slow, painful plodding of one limb after another. I could sense Max gaining on me with every stride. I tried to look over my shoulder to check if he had rounded the corner yet – which meant I never saw the woman in the parked car in front of me open her door.

I slammed into it and fell heavily onto the pavement. Sprawling on the concrete, I did not even know what had happened until I saw the open car door rocking uselessly on its smashed hinges; and the woman sitting in her seat, her hand raised to her mouth.

Still dazed, I pulled myself to my feet, ignoring the bolts of pain shooting up my thigh. I heard the woman ask whether I was okay but my attention was focused on my backpack lying in the gutter. I hobbled over to it, grabbed it and limped away, dragging my injured leg behind me.

I glanced back and saw Max glide around the corner. ‘John!’ he yelled, but I was already propelling myself away from him, hopping and skipping towards my car like a demented triple jumper.

I knew he was closing in on me, but I did not dare look back. Instead I pulled the key from my trouser pocket and pressed the unlock button. Skidding into the car door, I wrenched it open and bundled myself and my backpack inside. As I slammed the door closed behind me, I looked up and saw Max only a stride away. I hammered down my door lock and heard the echoing clunk-clunk-clunk of the centralised locking. Max hurtled into the car, flinging one arm across the windscreen, his other hand rattling my door handle. I could hear him screaming: ‘John, don’t go, John wait! Listen to me, please listen – ’

I put the key in the ignition, turned it, selected first gear and pulled away, ignoring the hammering on my windscreen and Max’s desperate, pleading face. As I sped off down the street, it occurred to me that this might be the last I would ever see of him.

Driving back to London, I reflected that when I had told Max I had a friend whom I trusted absolutely, and who would keep all the evidence from the boat without asking questions, I had actually described the sort of friend that he had once been to me. But I did not have friends like that anymore, and I wondered whether he realised this.

As I approached my flat, I saw three men in their twenties hanging around the main entrance. None of them looked like potential successors to Charlie Wall: they were too young and too obviously middle-class. But I still drove around to the back of the mansion block, parking near the small gate in the railings that led down to my patio. I grabbed my backpack and quickly climbed down the metal fire escape ladder before anyone could spot me, ignoring the pain in my knee.

Once inside my flat, I locked the back door behind me. For good measure, I bolted it too, and pulled the curtain across it as well. As I was inspecting all the other doors and windows, my mobile rang. I looked at its screen. The caller’s number had been withheld. I let the call divert to my voicemail, but when I checked it, no message had been left.

I was certain that the call had come from Max and I did not want to talk to him. He had to accept my deal or I would go to the police. There was nothing to discuss.

I decided to switch off my mobile. Max had my home number and I could use its answer machine to screen the calls. Carrying the backpack into my bedroom, I took out the gun. As I unpeeled it from the cling film I had wrapped around it, I ran my fingers across the engraved logo and the serial number underneath. I had checked it so many times that I could now recite it off by heart – A36154EB – the same number as the gun that had been taken from the Graingers’ house on the night Lucy had vanished.

My telephone rang. I let the answerphone pick up the call, but this time the caller did not hang up.

‘John, it’s Max. I know you’re there. We have to talk.’

I stood perfectly still, holding the gun.

‘Look, John, I did hide some things from you when we talked on the boat. Maybe that was wrong, but I wanted to protect you.’

I tightened my grip on the gun.

‘John, if you want my stake in PropFace, you can have it. I always thought I’d end up giving it to you. I can’t do it straight away. It’s been pledged as collateral. But, as long as you’re prepared to be a bit flexible on dates, I can sign the contracts you gave me whenever you’re ready. But we’ve got to talk first. If you’re worried about coming on board the yacht, we can always meet somewhere else. Just tell me when and where.’

He then read out the number of a new mobile phone and hung up.

I played the recording back twice. I had always teased Max about having only three volume controls: completely silent, loud and extra loud. But this time he was quiet. He sounded upset and perplexed rather than angry. But it was not only the tone of his voice that worried me. He wanted us to meet. My whole plan had depended on him accepting my terms and flying away.

I retreated to my bedroom where I took the unused cartridge out of the backpack and slotted it inside the gun. The rest of the evidence I left inside the backpack, which I placed in the drawer beneath my bed, briefly noticing that Angela’s tracksuit trousers were still stashed away at the back. For a second I wondered what advice she would give me, before locking everything away and turning my attention to the loaded gun on my bed. I wanted to keep this close to hand, but hidden.

Hanging from a hook on my door was an old grey fleece of mine that I rarely wore anymore. I grabbed this, picked up the gun and took them both into the kitchen, laying them out side by side on the table. They were about the same length.

Putting my fingers inside the fleece, I ripped open its lining until I had a hole that I could slide the gun into, barrel-first, until only the butt jutted out. Then I draped the fleece over a chair, pushing up the collar so it completely hid the gun inside.

The gun was for just for reassurance, I told myself, as I sat on my sofa at the other end of the room, staring at my fleece. I was never going to let Max inside my flat. All possible entrances were locked and bolted. My fridge had enough food inside to last me for a week if necessary and a few days rest would be good for my bruised knee. All I had to do was wait for Max to realise that I was not kidding. Either he signed my contract, flew off to the Caymans and got rid of Ian Joseph; or, I would go to the police.

I contemplated what that second option would mean for me. Provided I testified against Max, I might get away with only a short jail sentence. But it was not the prison-time I was afraid of: it was what I would come back to. Max had been right when he said they would take everything away. And it was not just PropFace I would lose. A stint inside would change my relationship with my children forever. I knew I had not been a perfect Dad, but at least I had not been a dad they were ashamed of.

Somehow, I had to make Max see sense. I had already shown him all the physical evidence I held against him. The only thing I had not showed him was my signed statement. But there was a good reason why I had not revealed this: it did not exist.

I had attempted to write it several times. Every time I started, all the images that I had tried to forget had reappeared in my mind, but no actual words, and I had sat staring at a blank computer screen, shivering, until I had convinced myself the statement wasn’t really needed. But now Max had chased me down the street, and rung me twice, trying to negotiate.

If I had the statement in front of me, I could read him an extract next time he called, and then tell him I was going to fax the rest of it to his office in the Caymans within twenty-four hours. That would get him on the first plane out of Heathrow. And once he was three thousand miles away, I could dictate terms to him in relative safety.

I walked over to the laptop sitting on the desk in my bedroom. I was just about to start typing when I remembered the laptop technically belonged to PropFace, not me. If my statement was going to mention everything we had done, I could not risk creating it on a laptop I did not even own. I had read too many stories about computer experts managing to recover deleted files from hard-drives.

There was a pen on my desk and I looked around for some paper, eventually finding a pad of Thomas the Tank Engine writing paper which I had bought Tom over a year ago to encourage him to write thank you letters.

I took the pad down from the shelf and studied it. The first sheet of paper had been ripped out and the next one contained a child’s drawing of a crocodile. But the next forty-eight pages were untouched. In the middle of each sheet was a tinted grey image of Thomas the Tank Engine’s smiling face.

I picked up my pen and started my account at Jack’s birthday party, describing how Max had told me that he had found someone who could lead us to Lucy’s killers. From there I moved on to Max’s confession about his insider dealing. Then I wrote down when and where I had met Gerry, how I had lured him on board the
Glen Avon,
and what I had seen when I climbed down the stairs from the control room and opened the door into the mess.

I had to pause there for a while. I made myself a mug of coffee and then resumed, scribbling my way through another twenty pages, describing Gerry’s murder in detail, and then revealing how Max and I had disposed of his body and burnt all the evidence, except for the gun and other items I had smuggled off the boat.

It had been a long time since I had written so much by hand. My fingers were stiff and I stretched my hand out, clenching and unclenching my fist, as I considered whether to include anything about Angela. Everything else now made sense, but her disappearance still didn’t, and I worried that mentioning it might undermine the rest of my story. I had very little proof that she had ever existed: just some text messages and emails, and half a tracksuit locked away in a drawer.

Needing a break, I wandered over to my bed and pulled out the tracksuit bottoms, examining every inch of them to see if there were any identifying marks or labels. When I turned out the pockets, a few torn-up strips of paper fell out.

I took them over to my desk, and started piecing them together like a jigsaw puzzle. Gradually I recognised the entry form for the tennis club’s tournament. I vaguely remembered Angela taking ages to complete it, then tearing it up, explaining that she had mistakenly written down her old UK address.

But the address panel was completely blank. She had only filled in her name and contact number, but the number she had given was a mobile phone number I had never seen before.

I went over to my phone, and called it, before losing my nerve and hanging up before it even rang. Searching for Angela had brought me to the brink of madness once, and I could not afford to be distracted, not now. I returned to my desk and resumed writing.

It took another two hours for me to describe everything I had witnessed and all the evidence I had assembled to prove that Max had also orchestrated the murders of George Colebrook, Charlie Wall and Lucy. There were only two sheets of paper left in the pad and I decided to use them by writing a postscript about Angela and her disappearance. Later on, I could make up my mind whether to include this with the main statement. As I wondered how to start this, I glanced down at the torn up membership form and its phone number again. It suddenly seemed rather flaky to allege that a woman had disappeared when I had not even bothered to call all the contact numbers I had for her.

I dialled the number more in hope than expectation, hearing it ring and ring. And then, just as I was about to give up, I was put through to voicemail and, for the first time in four months, I heard Angela’s voice.

‘Hi! I can’t take your call now. Please leave a message after the squeak. Bye!’

Without a shred of doubt it was Angela. She always said ‘squeak’ rather than ‘beep’, and the voice with its slight Kiwi accent was unmistakeably hers.

Then it was my turn to speak. I tried to sound friendly and upbeat. ‘Hi Angela, it’s John. I stumbled across this old number of yours so I thought I’d give you a call and see how you were —’

And then I lost it. Rather than simply giving her my number and hanging up, I carried on burbling away, telling her my kids were well and still asked after her, and that something terrible had happened with Max, and I was really worried. And then I said something that was even worse: I told her that I loved her and missed her desperately and wanted more than anything else to see her again.

I was still talking when her message service cut me off. I knew immediately that I had messed up, and that I sounded not only desperate but slightly deranged. If I could have scrubbed the recording, I would have. Instead I stood by the phone, thumping my head against the wall, and saying ‘Fuck, Fuck, Fuck’. As a final gesture of despair, I picked up the tracksuit trousers and flung them in the bin.

Then my door buzzer rang.

I crept towards the front window and lifted up a corner of the blind. I could not see much since it was already dark outside and my view through the old coal hatch was limited to the feet and legs of a man waiting outside the mansion block’s front door. He was wearing dark jeans and docksiders. I tried to remember what Max had been wearing.

My buzzer sounded again and then went silent. The man stepped back and paced up and down. Just when I thought he was going to walk away, he went up to the buzzer again, but rather than press it, he suddenly dropped to his haunches, and stared directly into the window I was looking out of.

It was Max. And when he saw me, he smiled.

We looked at each other for several seconds before he held up his mobile and pressed a key. He must have had my number on re-dial, because the phone in my flat started ringing immediately.

I let go of the blind, walked over to my phone and picked it up.

‘I knew you’d answer if I came,’ Max said.

I did not reply.

‘Did you get my message?’ he asked.

‘There’s nothing to discuss,’ I said. ‘Either you do what I said this morning, or I go to the police. It’s that simple.’

‘John, it’s not simple. Market confidence is fragile and I’ve got redemption demands coming out of my arse and —’

I slammed the phone down and moved over to the window, pulling up the blind so Max could see me. He was still there squatting on his haunches, the mobile in his hand, looking down into my flat. I mouthed ‘Go away!’, but he did not move. My phone started ringing again. Instead of picking it up, I looked at Max and he looked at me, as he spoke into my answering machine.

‘John, for the love of God, please listen to me. I don’t know who you’ve been talking to, but they haven’t told you everything, and now you’re in danger of destroying both of us. I can explain everything but not on the phone.’

I walked back towards the phone. A note of hope crept into Max’s voice.

‘Thanks, John. Just hear me out, just for a second. I know I took advantage of our friendship that day on the boat, but I’ve tried to pay you back. So let’s just draw a line under it. Let’s have a drink, go to restaurant, sit on a park bench, whatever you want, but please don’t –’

I picked up the receiver and spoke very slowly into it. ‘Max, I’m not going to meet with you. That was Gerry’s mistake. In fact this is the last time we will ever talk, so listen carefully. You know I told you that I had written out a full statement? Well, at 9am on Monday morning, I’m going to fax a copy through to the Alpha Tec offices in the Caymans. You’d better be there to intercept it. And if I don’t receive a signed copy of the contract I gave you by the five o’clock, I’m going to email another copy through to the police and –’

The phone went dead. He had hung up on me. I went over my blind and lifted it up. There was no trace of him.

I let the blind fall back. I had won a victory of sorts, I reckoned, but I did not want Max to feel he could call me whenever he wanted and restart negotiations. I strode over to my phone and took it off the hook, then switched the door bell buzzer off as well.