Disorder (Sam Keddie thriller series Book 1) (10 page)

Chapter 28

London 

The three of them sat round a circular dining table in the room overlooking the street. The lights were still out.

   In between the old man’s questions, Eleanor managed to explain to Sam that Donald had been her father’s neighbour for over twenty years. He was a retired civil servant, and he and Scott had bonded over their shared understanding of the often frustrating ways of Government.

   ‘So who are these bloody people, Eleanor?’ asked Donald. ‘They don’t seem to give a damn about law and order. Russians?’

   ‘No, Donald. Possibly our own.’

   There was a pause. ‘Well,’ he said, a trace of indignation in his voice, ‘I didn’t vote for this lot anyway.’

   He leaned forward. ‘You must call the police.’

   ‘You’ve known me since I was a teenager, Donald,’ pleaded Eleanor. ‘Can you trust me to do the right thing? And can I ask you not to do anything? At least for now.’

   Donald paused, lost in thought. ‘I’m not an idiot, Eleanor. I know we don’t always play fair in this country. It’s just I don’t feel comfortable ignoring the rules.’

   ‘Just for a short time. Please.’

   Donald grunted his assent.

   ‘I hate to interrupt,’ said Sam, ‘but I think we need to move. If they can’t find us in the streets, they may well come back here.’

   ‘We need to find somewhere safe; somewhere we can look through this stuff,’ said Eleanor, patting the envelope she’d taken from her father’s flat.

   ‘Take my car,’ said Donald. ‘It’s parked in Warriner Gardens, the street running parallel to Prince of Wales Drive. It’s an old green Peugeot. Here, I’ll write the registration on the envelope. I hardly use it these days. Just drop it back some time and post the keys through the letterbox.’

   Eleanor hugged the old man tight as they parted at the edge of the fire escape.

   ‘Now sod off, the pair of you,’ Donald said, with mock grumpiness, ‘before I change my mind.’

*

They drove the old Peugeot in an easterly direction for about ten minutes, changing course constantly, until they stopped in a small square in Kennington.

   A streetlight illuminated the car’s interior. Eleanor opened the envelope and divided up the wad of bills and receipts between them.

   ‘Christ,’ muttered Eleanor. ‘What a bloody mess.’

   ‘When we first spoke at the farmhouse,’ Sam said, ‘you mentioned your dad changing.’

   ‘I saw him about a week ago. That was when I noticed the difference.’

   ‘So we’re looking for something just before then. Something around the 11
th
or 12th.’

   They slowly sifted through the paperwork. In Sam’s pile there were countless receipts for supermarkets, taxi journeys, lunches at restaurants in central London, a bill from a wine merchant in Clapham, another from a plumber, but nothing, as yet, that seemed significant – or for those dates.

   About thirty minutes later, Eleanor shifted in her seat.

   ‘This might be something,’ she said. She handed Sam a receipt, printed on heavy paper. It was for a hotel in the Lake District – The Burn Banks, the words printed in an Art Deco font. There was a bar bill, plus the cost of a room for a single night – the 13
th
September – totalling £360.

   ‘Pricey,’ said Eleanor.

   ‘Your father stayed in the Keswick Suite, which would suggest that the room wasn’t a humble single, or even a twin.’

   ‘So we can probably assume he was with Jane Vyner,’ said Eleanor, a matter-of-fact tone of voice suggesting that, for now, any feelings about her father’s affair were being carefully held at bay.

   ‘The location of the hotel is interesting too,’ Sam said. ‘The Lake District. Kind of miles from everywhere.’

   ‘Perfect for a Minister keen to avoid prying eyes,’ Eleanor suggested.

   Sam nodded. ‘And the date feels right, if what you’re saying about your dad’s lurch in mood is correct. Something around this time changed him.’

   Sam glanced at Eleanor, but he could see she’d already made up her mind.

Chapter 29

The Lake District

It was after 4am and Sam reckoned they were now a couple of miles from their destination. Eleanor was sleeping in the seat beside him, her head slumped against the window.

   For the past hour Sam had been having serious doubts about the sanity of this journey. What did they expect to find at the hotel? A body buried in the grounds?

   He looked across at Eleanor. In sharp contrast to how she’d appeared hours before, her face looked calm. He knew it was a temporary state. Having had his world turned upside down, Sam had done the same to Eleanor, just as she was reeling from her father’s suicide. They were now both in a parallel universe, a place where old certainties and securities had evaporated.

   A car passed them on the road, filling the Peugeot’s interior with dazzling light. Shadows shot briefly across Eleanor’s brightly illuminated face. Her head flopped forward then instinctively pulled back.

   How odd, thought Sam, to be thrown together in such an intense experience and yet still barely know each other. He wasn’t sure he knew himself any more. He could feel the presence of the notes in his pocket, the glimpses of a father he’d deliberately held back from Eleanor. He was hardening, becoming more calculating.

   After about five minutes down a quiet road that straddled a lake, a slither of moon reflected on its inky black surface, Sam saw a sign for the hotel. He turned off down a narrow lane bordered on both sides by thick conifer woods, branches overhanging the track so that it felt like they were descending a dark tunnel, not arriving at a luxury hideaway. Eleanor woke, tensing at the sight of the dense wooded shadows on either side.

   But then the hotel appeared, white walls illuminated by carefully positioned ground lights. Eleanor relaxed a fraction. As the font on the bill had suggested, the Burn Banks was an Art Deco building, a two-storey curved construction.

   The entrance sat under a cantilivered porch, the lights inside sending a glow into the dark night.

  
They tried the front door. It was locked.

   ‘Guess we should have thought this through,’ muttered Sam.

    But then they saw a man cross the hotel’s lobby and head in their direction. He wore grey trousers, a crumpled white shirt open at the neck. He unlocked the door.

   ‘Hi,’ he said, rubbing his eyes. ‘Come in.’

   He re-locked the door behind them, then moved behind a reception desk.

   The interior was dimly lit but Sam could see that the Art Deco theme continued inside, with a staircase of polished chrome that curved in a loop upwards. On the walls were black and white photographs: two women in evening wear, their shoulders draped in fur; a man dressed in plus fours, a bow tie and large flat cap, a cigarette dangling from the side of his mouth.

   ‘What room, please?’

   Sam and Eleanor exchanged glances.

   ‘We’re not guests,’ said Sam.

   ‘Oh.’

   ‘We need to talk to the manager,’ Eleanor said.

   The man gave them a slightly puzzled look. ‘It’s 4.30 in the morning. The manager went home hours ago. She’ll be back at around 8. Can it wait till then?’

   Sam nodded. In truth he was exhausted and pretty sure that he wouldn’t have made any sense if he had been able to speak to her.

   ‘I don’t know about you, but I need to sleep.’

   Eleanor nodded.

   Sam turned back to the man. ‘Have you got any rooms?’

   The man frowned. ‘We don’t normally take guests in the middle of the night.’

   ‘Please,’ said Eleanor.

   The man looked from Sam to Eleanor, assessing them. His eyes dropped to a ledger on the desk. He turned a page. ‘There’s the Keswick Suite and,’ he said, running a finger downwards, ‘the Windermere, which is a double.’

   ‘The Windermere will do fine,’ said Eleanor. Clearly, thought Sam, the prospect of staying in the same room as her father and his lover was not appealing.

   ‘I can’t register you now,’ said the man. ‘Our system is shut down. I’ll need to take a credit card for security.

   ‘Can I pay in cash?’ Sam asked.

   The man paused.

   ‘I can do it now, if it’s easy.’

   The man blinked rapidly, as if courtesy was fighting with a desire to fling these two strangers out. ‘Sure.’  

   The Windermere, despite being the cheaper of the two options they’d been offered, was still a large room, decked out in restrained greys, with streamlined Modernist furniture arranged by the window which, the man had assured them, had a partial lake view.

   ‘And you think we weren’t followed?’ said Eleanor, once they’d been left alone.

   ‘I haven’t seen another car for hours,’ said Sam. ‘We’ve told no-one where we are. The car we’ve been driving doesn’t belong to either of us. I paid cash. And that man downstairs was so sleepy he didn’t even take our names.’

   This seemed enough for Eleanor, who flopped down on the bed.

   When Sam re-emerged from the bathroom, Eleanor was already asleep. Sam folded the bedspread over her. He pulled some cushions from a sofa and laid them on the floor. Soon he was in a deep sleep.

Chapter 30

The Lake District

Sam was dreaming.

   He was in a familiar place, the images and events to come as predictable as a repeatedly viewed movie. He would have loved to run. But he knew he was powerless to escape.

   He was standing by a large steel door, the kind that might open into a storage unit, or cold room. He turned the handle, and stepped inside.

   He was now in a laboratory, a place that might have been conceived by Hollywood for a film about a deranged scientist. On either side of the room were long workstations cluttered with activity. Numerous lit burners sat under tripods, a rainbow selection of liquids bubbling away in test tubes or beakers, flames and puffs of gas erupting from them. As Sam walked down the middle of the room he began to feel anxious, as if any minute now, there’d be an explosion from this chaotic display.

   The room was filling with smoke, the air becoming thick with the cloying smell of bad eggs.

   Sam heard a cry. His name, from an all-too-familiar voice. His mother’s. She was in distress. The cry was coming from the end of the room but, because of the smoke, he couldn’t see her. Suddenly she emerged out of the sulphurous fog. She was wearing a lab coat and was sitting on a stool. She didn’t appear to be tied up or injured, but merely paralysed, as if only he could free her from this prison. He moved through the smoke towards her.

   ‘I’m coming, Mum,’ he said.

   Just then there was another noise, a terrifying clatter he knew all too well. It was the sound of hooves pounding the floor’s hard surface. Suddenly out of the gloom emerged a huge black horse, sweat on its coat, nostrils flaring, white foam around its mouth and eyes bulging with fear. It was heading directly for Sam. He stepped back, petrified by the sight of this out-of-control wild animal. The horse was closer now and began rearing up on its hind, flailing at Sam with its front legs. Any minute now it would bring those hooves down on him and he’d be knocked to the ground and trampled to death.

   But even above the din the frenzied animal was making, Sam could still hear the cry of his mother.

   ‘Sam,’ she feebly called out. ‘Don’t leave me.’

   Sam decided to move forward towards his mother, who was beckoning with open arms. But soon he was again directly before the animal. It reared up once more, towering above him, a crazed beast about to strike him down. Sam screamed out.

   He was awake and sitting bolt upright. His body was covered in sweat, his system still firing on adrenaline. Eleanor was sitting up in bed looking down at him.

   ‘You OK?’

   ‘I had a nightmare,’ he said.

   ‘A nasty one by the look of things. You’re drenched in sweat.’

   ‘It’s a recurring dream,’ said Sam, keen to keep the revelations to a minimum. He’d never told anyone the content of this nightmare, and he had no intention of doing it now.

   ‘So nothing to do with the image of that man pressing a pillow against Jane Vyner’s face, which has kept me from falling asleep?’

   ‘I didn’t wake you?’

   ‘No, I was already awake. I’ve been watching you for the last few minutes. You were thrashing around. I wanted to wake you but I seem to remember you shouldn’t disturb someone having a nightmare.’

   ‘That’s sleepwalking,’ said Sam. ‘For future reference, feel free.’

   Eleanor turned on her side, resting her head against a hand propped up on an elbow. ‘Want to talk about it?’

   ‘That’s meant to be my line,’ said Sam, managing a smile. ‘It’s OK, thanks. It’s just my mind emptying. Meaningless stuff.’

   ‘That’s not what Freud and Jung thought.’

   Sam was taken aback by her comment. It was clear she could see through him – and that she wasn’t buying his dismissal of dreams as meaningless. But he couldn’t reveal the content of his nightmare to her, not until he’d resolved it himself.

   ‘I should take a shower,’ he said.

   When he returned from the bathroom, Eleanor had turned on her side to face the other direction. He sensed she was still awake. He settled back on the cushions on the floor but knew that, as always after the nightmare, sleep would not return.