Authors: Cari Hunter
“Bet you wish you’d gone in the van, eh?”
“Not at all. I’m having the time of my life.” He peered into the mist curling around the upper reaches of the moors. “I wonder if Abeni knows where I keep the insurance policies.”
Sanne smiled and flicked the windscreen wipers up a notch, without taking her eyes off the road. As another lorry approached, she decelerated, preparing for the turbulence in its wake.
“I might have to invest in a four-by-four.” She blinked against the lorry’s headlights, fighting to keep the tyres on the tarmac and away from the stone-littered verge. “I love this car, but it feels as if it’s made out of balsa—”
A muted bang cut her off mid-sentence. The car jolted, then began to fishtail wildly. For a second, she thought she’d hit an animal, but an arc of sparks from the rear told her that a tyre had blown.
“Fuck! Grab on!” Her knuckles blanched on the wheel as she tried to stop the car from flipping over. She turned into the skid, easing off the accelerator and resisting the instinct to brake. Something gave way on the undercarriage, slowing their momentum with a screech of metal. Almost lazily, the car drifted to the verge, clipped a dry-stone wall, and shuddered to a halt with its nose in a ditch.
Sanne stared at the wall, hardly able to believe they were still in one piece. One by one, she unpeeled her fingers from the steering wheel, and then rubbed her neck where the seatbelt had almost throttled her. “Well, that’s buggered it,” she said. “You okay there?”
The whites of Nelson’s eyes seemed huge in the darkness. “I’m fine. What the hell happened?”
“Blow-out, I think.” She winced, remembering that her tyres had been on borrowed time for several weeks. “Stay here. I’ll see what the damage is and whether we can put the spare on.” Without giving him a chance to argue, she shoved open her door and went round to the boot. She had just started to pull on her high-vis jacket when he joined her, torch in hand.
“You’re not going to get a spare on that.” He circled the beam around the misshapen rim of her tyre.
“It’s all fucked.” She kicked the exhaust pipe, emphasising the extensive damage to the underside of the car. “We’ll have to get a recovery truck out here.”
“Yeah. Good job we’re not blocking the road.”
“There is that. I’ll give Red Alert a call.”
The car rocked gently as they got back in, but it made no further progress into the ditch. She flicked on the hazard lights and scrolled through her phone’s directory until she came to the number for the breakdown company. Upon connection, she was put straight into a queue.
“My queue position is twenty-fourth,” she repeated, for Nelson’s benefit. “Seems like the weather’s playing havoc with a lot of folk.
Twenty-fourth
? Jesus, no wonder these bastards were cheap.” The recorded message droned on, concluding with an apologetic estimate of two to three hours for rescue and recovery.
“Balls to that.” She ended the call and chose another number. “We might as well cut out the middleman. Red Alert would take the car there anyway.”
Nelson nodded, though he clearly had no idea what she was talking about. Sanne watched the fog dance around the wall as she listened to the phone ringing out. She had almost given up, when she heard Joan Cotter’s raspy greeting.
“Hi, Joan, it’s Sanne Jensen. I’m really sorry to call you so late, but I’ve just had a blow-out up on the Snake, and I wondered if Geoff or Billy were around.”
Nelson’s mouth formed an “oh” of understanding as he recognised the names. On the line, Joan coughed, a thick, wet sound that made Sanne hold the phone away from her ear.
“Geoff’s still not well, and Billy’s out at the Crown. He’s probably had a drink by now, love.”
“Damn. Okay.” The prospect of half an hour on hold, followed by three hours sitting in a draughty, ruined Corsa, made Sanne push her luck. “Can you give me his mobile, just in case? Even if he can’t come out, he might know someone else local who could give me a tow.”
There was a long pause before Joan relented and reeled off the number. Sanne scrawled it on her hand, thanking her profusely. Wracked by another coughing fit, Joan hung up without saying good-bye.
“Cotter’s Garage is only about forty minutes back thattaway,” Sanne told Nelson, surprising herself by dialling the first part of Billy’s number from memory. “We’d be able to wait there for someone to pick us up. Warm, dry, a nice cup of—oh, hey, Billy, it’s Sanne.”
“Sanne Jensen.” She heard Billy clear his throat and laugh. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“A blown tyre and a knackered exhaust. Just shy of the Snake summit. I was hoping you might be a bit quicker than Red Alert.” There was no background noise, but even so, she heard him take a few steps and shut a door as if to move somewhere quieter. “Please, Billy, I know it’s a crappy night, but I’d really appreciate it.”
“Jesus, Sanne, that’s a long way to come. Besides, we’re so backed up with work, it might be a while before we could fix it anyway.” He sounded as if he was pacing now, his tread heavy and measured.
“Oh, I don’t care how long it takes to fix.” Although she hated the pleading note in her voice, she wasn’t above using emotional blackmail. “Did I tell you how tired and hungry I am?”
“You’re breaking my heart.” He sighed. “I’ll be there within the hour.”
*
“Name your price.” Standing out in the rain in a display of moral support, Sanne watched Billy hitch her Corsa onto his recovery truck. “Seriously, you can charge me over the odds. I don’t care.”
He grinned at her from beneath the hood of his coat. “Always had a soft spot for you, Sanne. Go and sit with your mate and get warm. I’ll be done in about five minutes.”
She flashed him a thumbs-up and went to the front of his truck. Nelson had already taken the passenger seat, so she hauled herself into the rear compartment.
“Nearly done,” she said. “Did you speak to Abeni?”
“Yep. The girls are asleep. I told her I might end up crashing at your place, or Meg’s.”
“Or the Cotters’.” She shrugged at Nelson’s horrified expression. “Hey, worst case scenario. It’d be better than nothing.”
“I don’t know about that. ‘Nothing’ wouldn’t come with lung cancer.” He kept his voice low, as if Billy had any chance of hearing him over the torrential rain and gusts of wind, and he clamped his mouth shut when the cab door opened a moment later and Billy climbed in.
“Reckon there’s anything you can salvage?” Sanne asked, prepared to consign her beloved Corsa to the scrap heap.
Billy fired up the engine and tossed a bag onto the seat beside her. “With a new exhaust bracket, new rim, and three new tyres, she’ll be fine.” He began to make a cautious turn, the amber lights on top of the truck a warning to other motorists.
“Really? That’s great.” The bag began to slide toward the floor, and she put a hand on it, catching both the canvas outer and part of its contents.
“I can do the tyres as reconditioned if you want,” Billy said. “It’d be a lot cheaper.”
“Mm.” She nodded, her eyes fixed on the loose end of rope in her hand. “Sounds good.”
Without altering her position, she eased the bag open. The rope coiled inside was bright orange, with a synthetic coating. She ran her fingers across it, examining the way it was plaited, its thickness and texture, and remembering how much effort it would take to saw through it using a Swiss Army knife. A nasty grain of suspicion began to form as she lowered the flap of the bag and looked at the mobile number smeared on the back of her hand. In the front of the cab, Nelson and Billy were chatting about football, neither of them paying her any attention. She entered the security code on her phone, anxiety making her fingers clumsy and her chest tight. Forcing herself to take slower breaths, she opened her inbox and then her work folder.
“Sanne, Nelson says you’re a Bolton fan. Please tell me he’s talking crap.” Billy glanced at her in the rear-view mirror.
She plastered a smile on her face and shrugged. “Blame my granddad. He had a season ticket for years. Used to take me to some of the home matches.”
Billy’s eyes were back on the road before she had finished her explanation. Nelson said something she couldn’t hear, and Billy laughed, pulled back into a conversation that didn’t include her. She looked down at her phone again and selected the e-mail at the top of the folder. Mal Atley’s client list filled the screen. Three lines down, she found the initials “BC” and traced her finger across to the corresponding phone number, tilting her left hand as she did so.
“One of these days, I’ll take you to see a real footy team,” Billy called to her.
She nodded, her mouth too dry to answer. The number exactly matched the one scribbled on the back of her hand.
*
For the third time in less than five minutes, Sanne double-checked the number on her e-mail against the one inked on her skin. Nothing had changed. She hadn’t been mistaken. The cab was quieter now. Nelson and Billy had run out of the usual conversational topics of strangers, and to cover any awkwardness, Billy had switched on the radio and was humming along to soft rock. Sanne looked out the window. They had dropped below the cloud cover, but the rain was still belting down hard enough to keep them well beneath the speed limit.
Strapped into the cramped back seat, Sanne had had plenty of time to think everything through. It was true that Billy Cotter fitted the profile of the perpetrator. An athletic, single male, he had been raised in the area, and he seemed to have had dealings with Mal Atley. His experience as a mechanic meant that removing the VIN on a Land Rover would be child’s play to him. Meanwhile, Sanne was sitting mere inches away from a bag full of rope identical to that used to bind Josie.
She dug her fingers into the seat, aware of how inconclusive her reasoning was. Two minutes on Google would locate any vehicle’s VIN, and that particular type of rope was used in many professions. All she had was a series of coincidences amounting to little of any significance, especially compared to the evidence against Ned. A persistent, objective part of her, though—the part not swayed by her friendship with Billy—insisted that it made sense for Ned to have worked in collaboration with someone, that he simply wasn’t capable of orchestrating this crime alone. Josie had only ever described one abductor, but her recollection was so poor that she could easily have been mistaken.
Sanne shut her eyes miserably. Her colleagues thought they had closed the case. Their success had been front-page news that morning, and everyone had received a congratulatory e-mail from the brass. Bringing in a second suspect would open a can of worms—and yet she didn’t want to be accused of ignoring a lead because it might incriminate a friend of hers.
That alone was enough to make her decision for her. She typed out a text, and covered her bases by writing an e-mail as well. She copied it to every member of EDSOP, hoping that someone would be working late, that Ned would still be in holding and so blindsided by Billy Cotter’s being implicated that his reactions would give him away. As she pressed
send
, the truck swerved, knocking her into the doorframe and rattling her teeth.
“Sorry, love,” Billy said. “This wind’s a devil.”
Trying to ignore the sweat trickling down her back, she waved away his apology and wondered how well she knew him after all.
Nelson had an expert poker face. It was a skill he and Sanne often utilised, and it was the reason he regularly trounced her at cards, but she had never appreciated how good it was until the moment he received her text. She had taken a risk including him in the recipients. Cold feet almost made her grab his arm in a panic as he reached for his phone, but his face betrayed nothing. He simply read her message and tucked the phone back into his pocket.
“Just the missus saying good night,” he said, in response to Billy’s quizzical glance. “She knows the reception out here is dodgy, so she won’t be waiting for a reply.”
The implicit warning made Sanne’s heart sink. She hadn’t even considered that. Sure enough, when she checked her signal it was fluctuating between one bar and none.
“Home sweet home,” Billy said as the garage came into view. He took the turn wide and edged into the yard. “You two can head in while I get everything put away.”
Sanne’s legs felt rubbery as she jumped down from the cab. Nelson gripped her arm, steadying her and then pulling her aside. He waited until Billy had driven well beyond them before speaking.
“What the hell is going on, San? Is he a suspect now?”
Behind him, lights flickered on in the reception area. If she and Nelson didn’t go inside soon, Billy or Joan would start to wonder why.
“I don’t know,” Sanne whispered. “Like I said on the text, his number’s on the list, and that rope is a match.”
“Anyone replied?”
“No.” She chewed her lip, at a loss what to do. “I probably didn’t even word it right. Did it sound crazy?”
“Yeah, a bit.” He gave her arm a reassuring squeeze. “Are you sure about this?”
“No, not at all.” But as she peered into the darkened yard, she remembered the small workshops scattered around its perimeter, and a sudden need to find out what was in them began to edge out her uncertainty.
Nelson shook his head, pre-empting her. “We don’t have a warrant, San.”
“I know, but what if Rachel’s—” She stopped speaking as she spotted Joan Cotter’s profile in the window. “I’ll go in.” She raised her voice deliberately. “Why don’t you see if Billy needs a hand?”
Nelson glared at her but didn’t argue. She watched him hurry around the side of the building until she lost sight of him in the unlit yard. Then she pushed open the reception door.
“Hey, Joan. I really am sorry about this.” Heat and smoke hit her full in the face. She tried not to cough, wishing she could turn around and head straight out again.
Joan used her cigarette to wave away the apology, sending ash cascading to the floor. “Where’s your partner?”
“Helping Billy.” She hadn’t mentioned that Nelson was with her, so presumably Billy must have phoned his mum while he was hitching up the truck. The idea made Sanne uneasy, though she couldn’t pinpoint why. With no sign of either man returning from the yard, she looked past Joan into the hallway that led to the main garage. She had never been farther than the kitchenette that customers were allowed to use, but she remembered that the corridor connected right through to the Cotters’ house. Having forced Nelson into an illicit search, she felt she should do more than stand around and passive smoke, so she played the oldest trick in the book.