Stephen Leather: Take Two

‘You sure there’s no one inside?’ asked Richards.

‘Carter runs the business from his mobile, pretty much. He doesn’t have any staff. He’s got a live-in boyfriend but he works so he’s not home either. Place is empty during the day.’

‘Call Bunny then,’ said Richards.

Halpin made the call and an hour later Warren turned up in a works van.

‘Mick, Warwick, how the hell are they hanging?’ asked Warren. He was a portly man in his fifties with an ill-fitting toupe that was several shades darker than his sideburns.

‘All good,’ said Halpin. ‘Got a place we’d like to get into. Worth a monkey to us.’

‘A monkey’s good,’ said Warren. Halpin pulled a roll of fifty-pound notes from his pocket and gave them to Warren.

‘Pleasure doing business with you,’ he said. He went back to his van, pulled out a blue metal toolbox, and walked off. He came back fifteen minutes later, whistling cheerfully. ‘Right, Bob’s your mother’s brother,’ he said. ‘I’ve left the front door on the latch. The alarm panel is on the left as you go in. I’ve programmed it with 6789 for when you want to leave. That way the owner will never known you’ve been inside. It’s a perimeter alarm so the only sensors are on the doors and windows. There are no movement sensors so if you want you can reset the alarm as soon as you go inside.’ He winked. ‘Be lucky.’

Richards and Halpin climbed out of the Porsche as Warren went back to his van. ‘You’re carrying, right?’ asked Richards as he locked the car.

Halpin nodded and patted his coat pocket.

They walked over to the front door. Richards took a quick look around and pushed it open. They stepped inside and Richards closed the door and locked it.

‘What the hell is this place?’ asked Richards. ‘It’s like some lost and found warehouse.’

‘He rents stuff out to film and TV companies,’ said Halpin. ‘Say a film needs an old record player. The don’t want to be bothered buying one so they rent one from companies like this. It’s quite an earner, if you’ve got the right contacts.’

‘Looks like a load of old junk to me,’ said Richards. He gestured at the metal stairs that led to the upper floor. ‘That must be where he lives.’

They went upstairs and into the main sitting room. ‘Talk about living above the shop,’ said Halpin. ‘It would give me the creeps living in a place like this.’

‘I dunno, there’s plenty of space,’ said Richards. ‘No noisy neighbours, plenty of privacy.’

Halpin went over to a table. There was a computer there and a phone. Next to the phone was a small Sony digital tape recorder. He picked it up and pressed the button. ‘Hi Jenny, this is Carolyn.’ Halpin’s eyes widened. ‘Yeah, I’m sorry I wasn’t at the airport to pick you up. I’ve had a pretty rough few weeks and I just need some me time. I’ve booked myself into a clinic — they don’t want to say which one — and I’ll be incognito for another week. I’m already feeling a lot better. Anyway, I’ve got to go. You be good, okay?’ Halpin switched off the voice recorder and looked over at Richards. ‘Is that enough for you, boss?’ he said,

Richards was staring at him open-mouthed. ‘The devious bitch,’ he said. ‘She faked it. Carter must have called her when she was at the supermarket and played the message.’ He shook his head. ‘Un-bloody-believable.’

‘This whole thing has been planned,’ said Halpin. ‘She’s setting us up.’

‘But for what? Why didn’t she just go to the cops?’ Richards pulled up a leather captain’s chair and sat down at the table and switched on the computer. It was a MacBook and it booted up in a few seconds. Richards wasn’t good with computers but this one wasn’t password protected and he rubbed his chin as he studied the file. One was marked JENNY DOCS and he clicked on it. The file opened to reveal a number of files, PDFs and photographs. He clicked on one of the photographs. It was a head and shoulders shot of Jenny. Or Carolyn. He clicked on one of the PDFs and grinned as it filled the screen. It was an Australian passport, with Carolyn’s photograph. He clicked on another PDF. It was an Australian driving licence, again with Carolyn’s photograph.

Halpin looked over his shoulder. ‘Bloody hell. What is he, a master forger?’

‘He works in TV, they’re always making fake documents,’ said Richards. ‘Besides, who knows what a real Aussie driving licence or passport looks like? Anything with a bloody kangaroo on it will do.’

Richard’s chair was on wheels and he pushed himself backwards. The wheels rattled over the wooden boards.

He glared at Halpin. ‘Mate, if Carolyn is Jenny or Jenny is Carolyn, then what the hell did you do with that bloody trunk?’

‘It went over the side, boss, like I said.’

‘I do not fucking believe this,’ said Richards.

Halpin pulled up a chair and sat down opposite him. ‘She’s been playing us from the start, boss.’

‘But you said she was dead,’ said Richards. He narrowed his eyes. ‘Right?’

Halpin nodded.

‘But she can’t be, can she?’ Richards pointed at the digital recorder. ‘That’s her voice. That Terry faked the Jenny Hall documents. So she can’t be dead.’

‘I suppose so.’

‘You suppose so?’

‘What do you want me to say, boss?’

‘I want an explanation, that’s what I want. I want you to explain this to me, mate, because you’ve been swearing blind that you pushed her over the side.’ He narrowed his eyes as he stared at Halpin. ‘You said she was at the bottom of the North Sea.’

‘She is,’ said Halpin. ‘I mean, the trunk is. She must have got out of the trunk and put something else in to make up the weight.’

‘Now you tell me,’ said Richards. ‘Didn’t you check?’

‘Check what? You said you’d drugged her and that she was in the trunk. We went out to sea and chucked the trunk over the side. Don’t try to blame this on me, boss.’

Richards pointed a finger at Halpin’s face. ‘Don’t you get fucking lippy with me, Mick!’ he shouted.

Halpin held up his hands but didn’t say anything.

‘So she’s not dead and instead of going to the cops she’s playing silly buggers and pretending to be a non-existent twin sister.’ Richards rubbed the back of his neck. The tendons there had gone as taut as steel wires. ‘This is fucking ridiculous.’

‘We’ve got to take care of it, boss, and we’ve got to do it quickly. Today. Tomorrow.’

‘I thought we had taken care of it,’ said Richards.

‘Boss, I dumped that trunk over the side. And it went down fast. Really fast.’

‘Then she can’t have been in it, can she?’

‘It was locked boss. You locked her in there.’

‘Damn right I locked her in there. I locked her in the trunk and you threw the trunk into the North Sea and yet here she is fixing up fake passports with Terry bloody Carter. Explain that to me, Mick.’

‘I can’t,’ said Halpin.

‘You didn’t let her out, did you? You didn’t do some sort of deal with her? Is that what’s going on here? Are you and her setting me up?’

‘Now you’re being ridiculous, boss. Ask Sonny. He helped me pitch it over the side. Call him. Ask him.’

‘Maybe you’re both lying.’

‘Why, boss? Ask yourself that. I was there in the house when you topped Cohen. She saw me there. I ran after her, remember, and shot at her. Then I took care of that weasel, Dunbar, and Reg, the truck driver. Why would I do that if I was in cahoots with her?’

Richards nodded slowly, knowing that what Halpin had said made sense. But what didn’t make sense was the way Carolyn Castle had come back from the dead. That was a better trick than anything Harry Houdini had ever pulled.