The Vectra remained twenty yards behind him, crawling along, no matter how much he altered his pace. A few other souls were braving the weather, all dressed in waterproof gear. Out in the distance, the dark shape of a ship bobbed on the water. Mark wondered what it was doing there, what it felt like, who was on it. Were they in danger? He couldn’t see any danger signals flashing, any flares, or SOS lights. Weathering the storm. Just like him.
The car was still following him, no doubt about it. Mark picked up his pace, nearly running now, and it surged forward, pulling over onto his side of the road just a few feet in front of him, blocking the pavement.
Mark turned and ran the other way, back toward town, ignoring the doors slamming and the shouts behind him. He couldn’t hear what they were saying anyway because of the wind and the crashing waves. He ran back toward the prom. If he could get into the maze of narrow streets behind the amusements, he might have a chance of losing them, whoever they were.
He hadn’t got very far when he felt a hand on his shoulder. He shook it off and kept going, but it was no use. Within seconds, his legs went from under him and he fell onto the hard surface, smashing his cheek against the stone. He felt a knee between his shoulders and his arm twisted up his back. The pain was excruciating, and he thought he screamed out, then he lay still. He could hear them talking but still couldn’t grasp what they were saying, what they wanted. Mark could taste blood and salt on his lips and his tongue as they hauled him to his feet and back to the car. He cried out, but nobody came to help. One final, magnificent wave smashed against the seawall and drenched them all from head to toe before they got him inside the Vectra.
The garage was a mere stone’s throw from the Askham Bar Park and Ride, off the outer ring road just west of York city center. Owner’s name, Charlie Kirk. Handy place for a car rental agency, Annie thought. You could arrive at the train station and take the bus out, then you never had to worry about the murderous city center traffic, or the parking.
As it had done so many times before, legwork had paid off once again, and it looked as if this was the place where the killer might have rented his Jeep Cherokee. At least, the same person had rented the same vehicle on several occasions since the previous summer, including the past weekend. They had got lucky because not many local outfits had Cherokees for hire, but Charlie Kirk did. Now Annie was about to question the owner, with Stefan and his impressions expert in tow. They went off to the car park around the back with the mechanic while Annie went to talk to the clerical staff.
The small office was overheated and stuffy. Three people worked there, one up front, to deal with customers, and the other two, a young girl and an older man, farther back. The office was full of the usual stuff – computers, filing cabinets, phones and fax machines – and the walls were covered with posters of cars.
Annie slipped her overcoat off, laying it on a chair, and offered her warrant card to the woman at the front desk.
“I’ve been expecting you,” the woman said, standing up to shake hands. “I’m Karen Talbot, office manager.”
Annie put Karen Talbot at about thirty. She had blond highlights, glossy red lipstick and eyes so blue they had to be contact lenses, and she was wearing a black silk blouse, showing plenty of cleavage, and a short, tight red skirt. The effect was lost on Annie, but she imagined it wasn’t on most of the male customers.
Karen sat down again, pulling her skirt as far over her thighs as it would go, which wasn’t far.
“Is the owner around?” Annie asked.
“The captain isn’t in today. This isn’t his only outpost, you know. Quite the empire builder, our captain is.”
“Captain?”
“Kirk. Captain Kirk. Our little joke. Only when he’s not here, of course.”
“I see,” said Annie. “We’ll talk to him later, then. Maybe you can help me for now?” She sat down opposite Karen.
Karen patted her hair. “I’ll do my best. As a matter of fact, the captain wouldn’t be able to tell you much, anyway. It’s not as if he actually works here, if you know what I mean.”
“So it’s you who deals with the public?”
“Mostly, yes.” Karen glanced behind at the other two. “But we take it in turns. That’s Nick and Sylvia.”
Annie said hello. Nick returned her greeting with a broad salesman’s smile and Sylvia smiled shyly at her. Annie wondered how Nick, who must be well the wrong side of forty, felt working for a young upstart like Karen. She also found herself rather uncharitably wondering how Karen had got the job and what her relationship with the owner was. But such thoughts had little to do with the business on hand, so she pushed them aside and got down to business.
“We’ve been told that you’ve rented out a dark blue Jeep Cherokee, or a similar vehicle, to the same person on five different occasions since last summer. Is that correct?”
“Yes,” said Karen. “Three times it was the Jeep, and twice we had to substitute a Ford Explorer.”
“Did that cause a problem with the customer?”
“Not that I remember. He just wanted the same type of vehicle.”
“Did you deal with this customer yourself?”
“Not every time.”
“I did, twice,” said Nick. “And Sylvia did once.”
“First off,” said Annie, “what were the dates?”
Karen went to the filing cabinet by her desk, flipped through the folders for a few seconds and pulled one out. Then she reeled off a string of dates in September, October, November and December, ending with the previous weekend.
“When did he take it out?” Annie asked.
“Thursday morning.”
“And when did he return it?”
“Saturday morning.”
So he had the Cherokee before the narrow-boats fire, but he took it back before the Roland Gardiner fire. Annie wondered why he would do that.
“Ever any problems when he brought it back?”
“No. It was always in excellent condition.”
“Did he return it full or empty?”
“Empty. It costs a bit more, but it saves the customer having to search for a garage himself.”
“You fill the cars here?”
“Yes. Of course.”
That was a piece of luck, Annie thought. They could take samples from the garage’s tank and from the Cherokee’s. Banks had told her that forensics could identify the tank from which the petrol used in the Gardiner fire came. Whoever had rented the Cherokee would most likely not have needed to refill the tank anywhere else. If they came up with a match, that was solid evidence to use in court.
“What’s the customer’s name?”
“Masefield. William Masefield.”
“What did he look like?”
“Ordinary, really.”
“Let’s see if we can improve on that, shall we?” said Annie with a sigh. She hated trying to get descriptions out of people. Most witnesses, in her experience, were neither observant nor good at expressing themselves in words. This time proved no exception. After about ten minutes, the best the three of them could come up with was that he was a little above medium height, generally in good shape though perhaps just a tad overweight, a little stooped, gold-rimmed glasses, graying hair and casual clothes – jeans, blue Windcheater. Nick thought he’d been wearing white trainers on at least one occasion, but didn’t know if they were Nike or not. At least Annie ought to be grateful there were no glaring contradictions about height or hair color. It could have been the person Mark Siddons had described visiting Thomas McMahon, but it could have been a thousand other people, too.
“Any closed-circuit TV here?” Annie asked.
“Only out back, where the cars are,” said Karen. “And it’s only turned on at night, when no one’s here. Otherwise we’d be changing the tapes every five minutes.”
Too bad, Annie thought. But it was worth a try. “Was there anything else you remember about him?” Annie asked.