‘Chris,’ he said. ‘You will be careful, won’t you?’
I couldn’t help but be touched by his genuine concern, despite my low opinion of him. ‘Don’t worry. Just for your information, I’m not going alone. I’m taking some support she doesn’t know about.’
‘A friend? It’s good that you’ve got a friend you can trust.’
‘It’s Andrew Hadfield from the canal group,’ I said, putting on my coat and collecting my car keys. ‘He’s a decent bloke. He’ll be watching my back, and acting as an independent witness.’
Frank put down the photos and seemed about to say something else important. Then he wiped his hand across his eyes like a man overwhelmed with weariness. I remembered the stress he’d been through and reminded myself to make allowances. I understood that too much fear and uncertainty could scramble your power to think logically, and wreck your ability to say what you meant.
In the end, Frank kept whatever he was thinking to himself, but followed me as I went to the door.
‘I don’t know what’s wrong with me, Chris,’ he said. ‘I don’t understand any of it now. Not any of it.’
52
The Fosseway Wharf site was totally unlit, and the darkness was palpable. I pulled the Escort into the damp undergrowth and turned off the headlights. The blackness closed around us immediately, and the only sound was the occasional car going by on the road behind us. The rain had stopped, but everything was wet and dripping.
Andrew and I slipped through a narrow gap in the steel fencing and picked our way carefully past the restored lock towards the wharf. Once we were off the towpath, the ground became sticky and treacherous underfoot, and we had to move carefully as we crept past the sheer drop off the edge of the wharf into the excavated canal basin.
Sensibly, Andrew had brought a powerful torch, which he directed towards our feet. He already seemed to have planned the exact spot for the meeting — just behind the abutment of the old bridge, where a fragment of an old warehouse still stood, its tumbled brickwork and overgrown scrub providing a complex of dark corners where he could remain completely invisible while Laura and I talked.
Ahead of us was a cleared section of wharf, and a fenced-off compound where the excavator and giant dumper trucks stood waiting for their next tasks. Beyond them, the earth was heaped up and piled with debris where work had yet to start on clearing the accumulated decades of infilling. There was a long stretch exposed here where the edge of the wharf was crumbling away, its retaining bricks rotten and worn loose. No one knew yet what the condition of the brickwork was under the debris. The area would have to be cleared by hand before it was safe to let the excavator on.
In the darkness, I became very conscious that nature was still in control of most of the site. The reclaimed section was only a tiny portion of the expanse of flourishing birches and sycamores, and the dense undergrowth of brambles and bracken hadn’t been touched for nearly fifty years.
‘Yes, this will do fine,’ I said. ‘I hope you don’t have to wait long.’
‘Don’t worry about me,’ said Andrew with a grin, as he switched off his torch and slipped back into the shadows. Within a couple of seconds, I couldn’t see him at all.
I walked back to the gateway and got into my car. For several minutes I sat alone, watching the clock tick round, until I was startled by a sudden knock on the window. Laura’s pale face peered in at me.
I wound the window down to speak to her, but she hushed me and gestured at me to get out of the car. Common sense almost got the better of me then. Why should I trust her after all that had happened? But one glimpse of her face close to mine, and I’d weakened. I knew I would follow her, even if it was into more danger.
‘Are you alone?’ I asked.
‘Of course.’
‘This way then.’
‘Where are we going?’ she whispered.
‘We need to get away from the road.’
As we passed the lock and left the towpath to enter the wharf, she slipped on the mud, and I automatically put out an arm to support her. She leaned against me, but I pulled instinctively away.
‘You need to trust me, Chris. Please.’
‘Tell me why I should,’ I said.
‘We’re on the same side. You’ve got to trust someone some time.’
We were close to the spot where the skeleton had been found by the excavator. I could see the remains of the heap of lime, gleaming white in the darkness, reflecting the small amount of light from the night sky. My eyes were adjusting to the gloom, and I could see the vehicles crouching in their compound like giant insects.
Between us and the compound was a wide, dark expanse of earth and rubble, with the distorted shapes of foundations and fragments of wall here and there. To the left of us was the steep drop into the basin. But it was impossible in the dark to make out where the edge of the wharf ended and the void began. I led Laura forward a bit more until the remains of the bridge appeared, and then the edge of the warehouse ruins.
‘Right. This is fine. Now tell me. And make sure it’s the truth.’
‘This is crazy. What are we doing in this place?’
‘It’ll do for me,’ I said, the alcohol still carrying me through so far. ‘First of all, I want to know who killed Samuel.’
‘I need to explain properly—’ she began.
‘Just tell me!’
She pulled her hand away and hugged her arms miserably round her body. ‘I was there,’ she said. ‘When he was killed, I was there. I saw it.’
‘So you were the witness. The car park attendant told me there was someone.’
‘I saw what happened, but I didn’t know who was in the car. Not then.’
‘But you do now.’
‘Yes. And there’s proof.’
We were interrupted by a clumsy crashing in the undergrowth back near the gateway, on the other side of the lock. It was the sound of a heavy body floundering in the brambles and trampling dead wood underfoot.
‘I thought you said you’d come alone?’ I said angrily.
‘I did. I don’t know who that is.’
‘You’ve tricked me again.’
‘No!’ She listened, trying to peer into the darkness. ‘But, Chris — did you bring someone with you?’
‘Hello! Where are you?’ called a voice out of the darkness. A shiver ran up my back. It was the voice of Simon Monks.
‘It’s him.’
‘I don’t know what he’s doing here,’ said Laura unsteadily.
‘Liar!’
‘No!’
I scrambled away from the direction of the voice, abandoning Laura in the darkness before she could cling on to me and prevent my escape. I could hear Monks thrashing about, but he seemed to be going in the wrong direction. From the amount of noise and the breathless mutter of subdued voices, it sounded like he wasn’t alone either. There were at least two or three of them, and I was badly outnumbered.
I ran along the edge of the wharf towards the vehicle compound, painfully conscious that I was heading deeper into the derelict wharf and further away from the road and my only escape route. I peered anxiously into the shadows of the ruined buildings, but saw nothing that reassured me.
‘Andrew!’ I hissed. ‘Where are you?’
My urgent whisper was almost swallowed by the darkness, but he must have heard me.
‘Here.’
There was a strange tone to his voice. I looked around for him and saw his outline close to one of the giant six-tonne dumper trucks. The gate of the compound stood open, and it went through my mind that he was intending for us to escape in the dumper. For a moment, I had a mental picture of ploughing through Monks and his friends, crushing them under the huge wheels.
But my fantasy was very short-lived, as Andrew stepped towards me and I saw his face. I could see he had no intention of helping me to escape.