‘I don’t do money either. This way, Muller,’ she pointed to the door to the next room. ‘We’re going to put you down in the cellar. I hope the bed’s comfy.’
‘Tremain will kill me!’ he protested. ‘He’ll kill you too!’
‘Comes with the territory,’ she said, and waved for him to get a move on. Reluctantly he led the way through the door. They paused by another door in the corner of the room. ‘Go on, Muller, open it.’ He did so. It opened out onto a series of stone steps leading down into a darkened basement. He made one last attempt to reason with her but she prodded the barrel of the gun between his shoulder blades and he clumped downstairs. There was a door at the bottom with a shining new padlock on it. ‘Inside, Muller,’ she said. He went quietly inside the room and she closed the door on him, snapping the padlock in place. She heard him cursing her from the other side.
When she came back up the stairs Gareth was waiting for her. He’d picked up Muller’s gun. ‘I’m betting this one is loaded,’ he said, pointing it at her.
She ignored him. ‘I’m famished,’ she said, walking over to the fridge. ‘What have we got to eat?’ She opened the fridge door. ‘What is it with men and empty fridges?’ she opined.
‘I mean it; I’ll use this thing if I have to. I want some answers. Talk.’
‘So now you want to listen to me? If you’d have done that before it would have saved us both a lot of trouble.’ She pointed to the case Muller had brought from the car. ‘Open it, Gareth, if you don’t believe me.’
He went over to the black case, the gun trained on her still. He snapped open the gold fasteners. There were many documents inside, including a variety of passports and plane tickets. ‘I don’t get it,’ he said.
‘As soon as you’d been handed over he was planning on making a quick getaway and losing himself somewhere exotic and far away.’ She nodded at his hands. ‘It could have been far worse than a few pinpricks.’ She removed her leather jacket. She wore a tight-fitting T-shirt that emphasised her slender torso, her small breasts. ‘Camael wants you dead; Lambert-Chide wants you alive — it’s all a matter of taste, I guess.’
‘Is that supposed to be funny?’
‘Like I said, I don’t do humour.’
‘Enough of the mind games. Who are you?’
‘Caroline Cody.’
‘And who exactly is Caroline Cody?’
‘Someone sent to help save you.’
‘I’ve been told that once before and I’m not about to fall for it again.’
She gave a careless shrug. ‘Suit yourself, but I’m all you’ve got between people like Muller and Camael. She opened a cupboard door. ‘We’ve got bread. You like bread?’
Gareth ran a hand through his hair, his hand trembling. ‘This is complete and utter madness. I have to get out of here.’ He lowered the gun, then dropped it onto the sofa as if it were something dirty and offensive.
‘Sure you do. You go out there and you won’t last more than a couple of days. One or the other will get you. And don’t even think of going to the police. That’s a shortcut to your funeral. Like I said before, life is never going to be the same again for you. Gareth Davies? Forget him. As far as you’re concerned he doesn’t exist anymore, not if you want to stay alive.’ She began to hum the Bee Gees’ song Staying Alive. ‘Great, we have crab paste,’ she said. ‘You like crab paste?’
Gareth rubbed his tired eyes. ‘How did I ever get into this mess? One day I’m going quietly about my business, the next thing I know a sister I never knew I had throws herself in front of my car, and then I’m on the run for my life not knowing who to trust, and best of all not knowing why.’
Caroline took the lid off the crab paste and sniffed it. She threw it back in the cupboard. ‘You’ll know soon enough. Look, I don’t mean to sound so vague, but right now is not a good time to hit you with the full story. Trust me, it will either freak you rigid or you’ll think me crazy.’ She angled her head. ‘Crazier,’ she said. ‘Or both, which is the most likely scenario.’ She nodded at his bandaged hands. ‘How are the hands and feet?’
‘Sore but I’ll survive.’
‘That’s my little soldier,’ she said.
They heard a dull rumbling from down below as Muller pummelled the cellar door. ‘Is he going to be OK?’ Gareth asked.
‘Only until Tremain gets here.’
‘You really believe Tremain is capable of killing someone?’
Her face steeled. ‘I know it,’ she said. ‘From personal experience.’
34
Detective Chief Inspector Stafford stepped out of the car, his expression as sullen as the Derbyshire weather. He buttoned up his coat. There was a distinct chill in the air, the sky busy with an armada of angry, grey clouds urged on by a brisk, biting wind. Massive hills towered all round, like the backs of washed-up humpback whales, enclosing them in a solemn embrace. The road shone like wet leather.
‘Cold, sir?’ asked Styles. He carried a cardboard folder under his arm.
‘I must have been up north the best part of twenty years, and in all that time it’s never warmed up,’ he returned, scowling.
‘Maybe southerners are just too soft,’ said Styles.
Stafford groused something disparaging into the pulled-up lapels of his coat. He nodded towards the house, half-hidden by fir trees in need of a haircut. ‘This the one, Nobby?’
Styles sighed. ‘I wish you’d not call me that.’
‘What? Nobby?’
‘Yes, sir; Nobby.’
‘Can’t see your problem. Nobby Stiles was a hero of mine. He helped lift the World Cup for us back in ’66. Skinny, bald, gap-toothed and not very pretty, but a hero all the same.’
‘So you say. But Nobby has other connotations these days, as you are well aware. Anything but Nobby, is all I’m saying.’
‘Let me think about it,’ said Stafford lifting the gate catch and strolling down the path. He looked back over his shoulder. ‘Yeah, this is the one, Nobby!’ He saw Styles curl his lip and he smiled inwardly. Young pups should always know who the top dog is, he thought. Didn’t hurt to remind them now and again, especially someone as irritatingly ambitious and self-centred as Styles. ‘Sort of place you’d half-expect a historian to live, ain’t it? House on its last legs, garden overgrown, weather damp and dreary. Northern.’
‘You’ve make it perfectly clear; history is not your thing.’
‘Hated the fucking subject,’ he said with venom. ‘Dry old farts lecturing me about dry old dates that no one gives a toss about.’
‘Except for ’66, of course’ he said.
‘That’s not history!’ he retorted.
‘It is to me,’ Styles drove home with a wry smile. ‘Positively medieval.’ He looked back at the high hills, the clouds wrapping themselves around their summits like gauzy scarves. ‘We learn from the past,’ he continued. ‘Or at least we should do, if people’s minds are open to it and they want to learn.’
‘Bollocks!’ scoffed Stafford.
‘My point exactly.’
‘Nobody learns from history,’ he said. ‘That’s a joke. Talking of which, did you hear the one about the new origami museum?’
‘No, sir,’ he said absently.
‘It folded.’
‘Great.’
‘Or the calculator museum?’
‘If you must.’
‘It didn’t work out.’
‘Your point being, sir?’
‘My point being history is like the pencil museum.’
‘And that is?’
‘Pointless!’
Styles stopped before the door, its paint peeling or scuffed away to reveal past incarnations of colour. ‘That’s not true. The book is a case in point,’ he said, pointing at the volume of True Crimes in Stafford’s hand. ‘What point is there in being here unless we want to learn something from the past, find a connection?’ He reached for the brass doorknocker, so in need of a clean that it looked as if it had been smeared in green-brown boot polish.
‘Yeah, whatever you say,’ he said absently. ‘The curtains are all drawn,’ he noticed.