Simon Kernick - The Business of Dying

I picked up my mobile and thought about calling her. I was aware I might piss her off, but events were moving too rapidly for me to sit back and be patient. If she rejected me now it wasn't actually going to make a great deal of difference. I stared at the phone for maybe ten seconds, then put it down. I'd wait until tomorrow.

I finished my cigarette, then went up to the bar to get another drink. Joan was still chatting to the middle-aged man, and they were laughing like old friends, though you could tell from the way she excused herself from the conversation that they didn't actually know each other.

'What can I get you, Dennis?' she asked, before turning back to the guy. 'You see this bloke here?' she said, meaning me. 'Changes his drink all the time. You can never tell what he's going to have. Isn't that right, Dennis?'

'A man should never be too predictable,' I told her, and ordered a bottle of Pils, as if to prove the point.

As she turned away to get it, I gave the guy a brief smile. He smiled back awkwardly, then looked away. I noticed he was drinking Coke. Suspicious in a place like this, but not unheard of.

Another youngish couple came in and I found myself eyeing them closely. She sat down at a table near the bar and removed her hat and scarf, appearing not to notice me. Her boyfriend/ colleague approached the bar and I turned away and paid for my drink, careful not to draw attention to myself. Joan asked me if I was dealing with the case of the old lady who was mugged. She told me that the victim was the mother of one of her former regulars. I told her I wasn't, but that I thought there might be arrests soon. 'It was kids who did it, and kids always end up giving themselves away. They can never keep their mouths shut.'

'Little bastards,' she said. 'They should bloody hang 'em.'

Which were probably the sentiments of 80 per cent of the population, not that it would ever make any difference. Usually, at this point, I'd have put on my police hat and tried to convince both myself and my audience that the perpetrators would end up receiving their just punishments, but this time I didn't bother. They wouldn't.

'Don't ever rely on the courts for justice, Joan,' I told her. 'They're afraid of it.' I turned to Coke Drinker. 'Isn't that right?'

'I never talk politics,' he answered, without looking me in the eye. 'It's too easy to make enemies.'

'Well, someone should do something about it,' Joan grumbled, and went off to serve the guy who'd just come to the bar.

I didn't bother returning to my seat but drank my beer quickly and in silence. When I'd finished I looked for Joan but she'd disappeared out the back. I nodded to Coke Drinker, who nodded vaguely back in my direction, and walked out.

The cold spell from Siberia had well and truly arrived, and an icy wind ripped through the narrow street. I pulled my coat tight around me and started walking, occasionally looking back. The parked cars lining both sides were empty and no one came out of the Chinaman behind me.

After about fifty yards I turned into a side street and waited in the shadows, shivering against the cold, telling myself I was a fool because if they were following me it would only confirm what I already suspected, and would make no difference to my predicament.

But still I stood there. Five minutes passed. Then ten. A car came by slowly with two men in it, but I couldn't make them out properly. It carried on and accelerated away at the end of the street.

An icy rain began to fall and I broke cover, heading for home, but keeping to the shadows, not knowing who was going to be waiting for me when I got there.

When I got near my flat, I surveyed the street carefully, looking for anyone or anything that might be out of place, but it seemed the cold had driven everyone indoors. Only when I was satisfied that the silence was genuine did I walk hurriedly up to my front door and ram the key in the lock, still half expecting some hidden assassin to emerge from the darkness, or a shouting posse of armed police to charge me, screaming staccato orders.

Nothing happened, and there was relief when the door closed behind me for the last time that night.

The first thing I did when I got upstairs was phone in sick. I didn't know how much they knew at the station about the investigation into me but I found it hard to imagine that Knox wouldn't have been informed of it by now. Next I rang Raymond's mobile, but he wasn't answering, and neither was Luke, his bodyguard, so I left a message asking for him to call me and telling him I wasn't going to be at home for the next couple of days. Just in case he was thinking about sending anyone round. Then I made a cup of coffee and told myself not to panic. Foresight, if not right, remained on my side.

I went to bed about ten o'clock and fell asleep surprisingly easily. I remained out like a light the whole night, and for once I actually felt partially refreshed when I awoke the following morning at just after eight.

It was now time to plan my next move. Each day I remained here the chances of my being arrested grew higher, which meant that I was going to have to take the plunge fast. I needed to shake off my surveillance, grab the money from the Bayswater deposit box, and go to ground for a bit. As soon as I started running and they realized that I was on to them, that was it; there'd be no turning back. I was going to have to keep running for the rest of my life.

I went round the corner to get a paper, acting as casually as possible and not spotting anything or anyone untoward, then returned to read it over a light breakfast of toast and coffee. There was no obvious mention of the Traveller's Rest investigation within its pages and nothing on the Miriam Fox case. Now that an arrest had been made and charges laid, there'd be no further mention of her murder until the trial, and probably not much coverage then. Instead, there were the usual tales of woe from Britain and abroad: a farming crisis; renewed famine in Africa; a couple of food scares; and a liberal sprinkling of murder, mayhem and fashion tips.

When I was on my sixth cigarette of the day, I decided I had nothing to lose by calling Carla Graham. I phoned her office from Raymond's mobile, concerned about the possibility that my own phones had been bugged. She picked up on the fourth ring and I was relieved to hear no meeting-type noises in the background.

'Hello, Carla.'

'Dennis?'

'Yeah, it's me. How are you?'

She sighed. 'Busy. Very busy.'

'Well, I won't keep you long.'

'I was going to call you today anyway,' she said.

'Oh yeah?'

'Look, I don't want you to take this too seriously, but you said to let you know if anyone else went missing.' An ominous sensation crept up my back as partially buried thoughts suddenly unearthed themselves like zombies in a graveyard. 'And someone has.'

'Who?'

'Anne Taylor.'

Anne. The girl I'd shared coffee with less than a week ago. The girl I'd saved from abduction.

'Jesus, Carla. When did this happen?'

'She was last seen on Sunday afternoon.' She seemed to sense my unease. 'She's done this before on several occasions so I don't think there's any real cause for alarm. And obviously, there is a man in custody for the murder.'

'I know, but it isn't as cut and dried as that. There are a lot of unanswered questions, and everyone's innocent until proven guilty. You of all people should know that.'

'I still don't think you should read too much into it. Anne is that type of girl.'

'And so was Molly Hagger, but you can't help getting concerned. When did Anne last go missing like this?'

'About a month ago.'

'How long was she gone for then?'

'A couple of nights. A similar length of time to this. That's why we haven't been too worried. The last time she went AWOL it was because she was off on a binge with an older woman. She got stoned, fell asleep, and when she woke up twenty-four hours later she came back here.'