Sally kept walking, watching her sister out of the corner of her eye. She sensed Ben was more than just a trusted friend to her.
Then the call connected and she heard a man’s voice – Ben, she supposed – speaking excitedly. She heard the words ‘I was just about to call you,’ then something inaudible that made Zoë stop dead in her tracks. Sally paused too, and turned to her sister.
‘Are you sure?’ Zoë muttered into the phone. Her expression had changed completely. ‘A hundred per cent?’
‘What?’ Sally hissed. ‘What is it?’
Zoë flapped a hand at her to be quiet. She turned away and walked a few steps in the opposite direction, her finger in her ear so she could hear better what Ben was saying. She listened for a while, then muttered a few short questions. When she hung up, she came back at a trot, beckoning to Sally to get back to the car.
‘Zoë?’ she said, breaking into a jog alongside her. ‘What?’
‘Ben’s in Gloucester docks.’
‘And?’
‘Kelvin’s got a mate – a friend from the army who owns a barge moored there.’
‘A barge?’
‘We were looking for a barge right from the beginning. Thought there had been a houseboat here that night. This has to be the same one. It’s locked. Ben’s waiting for Gloucestershire Support Group boys to arrive and break in but …’
‘But what?’
‘He thinks there’s someone inside it. I think we’ve found him. I think we’ve found Kelvin.’
Chapter 42
Sally drove fast up Lansdown Hill, Zoë in the passenger seat, drumming her fingers on the steering-wheel, glancing at the dashboard clock, calculating how long it would take to get to Gloucester. The traffic was thin now. It would take less than ten minutes to pick up Millie from the Sweetmans, then for Sally to drop Zoë off at her car. From there, with luck and a tailwind, Zoë could be at the docks within the hour.
Her mind was racing. Had the barge simply motored away, on the night of Lorne’s killing, along the canal system? She scrabbled in her memory – trying to decide if the Kennet and Avon canal connected into Gloucester. She couldn’t recall – but she could remember that the Gloucester docks were less than a mile from the red-light areas of Barton Street and Midland Road. She wondered if Kelvin’s ‘army friend’ had taken the photo of that pile of dead bodies in Iraq, and what – what – would be on that barge? Her hand kept drifting to the pocket where her phone was, wanting to call Ben, because it seemed to her that whichever way she pictured the barge she also saw blood drifting away from it in the water, swirling in oily curlicues. She wanted to tell him to be careful, to wait until she got there.
Sally indicated left and turned the car into Isabelle’s long driveway. Zoë’s phone rang, making her jump. She snatched it out of her pocket. It was Ben.
‘Are you OK?’
‘I’m fine.’ He sounded rushed. Excited. She could hear he was walking. Could hear traffic going past him as if he was on a busy city road. ‘But, Zoë, where are you? Have you left yet?’
‘I’m just picking up my niece. I’ll be back at my car in five and on my way.’
‘No. Don’t come to Gloucester.’
‘What?’
‘He’s not here.’
‘Shit.’ She sat back in her seat, deflated. She shot Sally a sideways glance as they bounced along the track. ‘Not there,’ she muttered. ‘Not there.’
‘How come?’
‘How come, Ben?’
‘The support team kicked the door in. His mate was on board, pissed as a parrot, but he hasn’t seen Kelvin in weeks. The barge hasn’t been anywhere near Bath, hasn’t left Gloucester in over a year – the harbour master confirmed that. So I went back to the phone thing. You know I couldn’t get anything about his mobile, needed superintendent authority on that. Well, someone at BT owes me a favour and—’
‘And?’
‘Burford made several calls to a number in Solihull this lunchtime. Turns out his sister lives there.’
‘Solihull? That’s about – what? A forty-minute drive if you take the—’
She broke off. Sally was slowing the car down and the headlights had picked out a vehicle, parked at an untidy angle up ahead in the driveway. A Land Rover.
‘That’s funny,’ Sally began, as Zoë leaned forward. ‘I thought Isabelle wasn’t—’
‘Stop!’
Sally slammed on the brakes. She stared out of the windscreen at the mud-covered Land Rover. Zoë made frantic motioning signals. ‘Go back.’ She swivelled her head to look out of the back window. ‘Go on. Do it.’
Sally slammed the gearstick into reverse and the car lurched back twenty yards, bumping over potholes and the grass verge. Ben’s voice was coming from the tinny little phone speaker. ‘Zoë? What’s happening?’
‘In there. Put it in there. Fast.’
Sally jumped the car back another ten yards, shoving it in behind a row of laurels. She switched the engine off, and killed the headlights. Zoë sat forward in her seat, peering down the driveway.
‘Zoë?’
She lifted the phone numbly, a ball of adrenalin clenched in her chest. ‘Yes.’
‘Are you OK?’
‘We’re OK,’ she said dully. ‘But listen. I really don’t think Kelvin’s in Solihull.’
Chapter 43
The Sweetmans’ house was big – a Victorian monstrosity, with three floors and a turret on the roof. There were lights on in some of the downstairs rooms and a window on the ground floor stood open. Zoë leaned out of the open passenger window and took in every detail. ‘Isabelle doesn’t know Kelvin.’ She wound up the window and turned to her sister. ‘Does she?’
‘No.’
‘Well, that’s his Land Rover. That’s the registration the PNC gave me this afternoon.’
Sally fumbled for her phone. Her face had gone pale. ‘He doesn’t know Isabelle, but he does know Millie.’
‘He knows Millie? How come?’
She hit a fast-dial key and held it to her ear. ‘She was up at his house one afternoon.’
‘What the hell was she doing there?’
‘She was with me one day when I was working for David – but she knew Kelvin before. She and the others used to go up there. I think they used to torment him. Peter and Nial and Sophie and Millie. And Lorne too, probably, they all used to—’
She put her finger to her lip. The phone must have been answered. She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it. Shut her eyes and put her fingers against her forehead. ‘Uh, Millie,’ she said, after a moment or two. ‘It’s Mum. I’m at Nial’s. I need you to call me the moment you get this message. The moment.’ She hung up and dug her thumbnail into the space between her two front teeth. ‘The phone battery keeps running out. I’ve been meaning to replace it.’
Zoë was staring at Sally’s face. ‘Sally? Did you just tell me they used to torment Kelvin? And that Lorne went up there too?’
‘Yes. Why?’
She turned and gazed back at the Land Rover. What, she thought, if all along Lorne hadn’t met Kelvin through the clubs but through Millie’s gang and the days they used to go up to the cottage and torment him? She could imagine someone like Peter Cyrus doing it – she could imagine Kelvin’s rage. All like her. What if those words meant all the girls who’d been in that gang? The message in Sally’s car had been on the passenger side – where Millie would have been sitting, which meant it could have been directed at Millie, not Sally at all.
‘Shit,’ she hissed. ‘Call Nial.’
‘What?’ she said numbly. ‘Sorry?’