Adrian Magson - No Help For The Dying

‘You bet. It keeps me young.’ He stared at the ceiling. ‘Right, logic time. You never came across this church before?’

‘No.’

‘So, it’s a coincidence. They help people in need, they distribute bibles in hotels and they search for runaway kids. It’s not illegal and they’re not the only ones. And Henry is a member, supporter, whatever. Good for him.’

‘Except I can’t understand why de Haan wouldn’t let me speak to Henry.’

‘Maybe he was telling the truth, and Henry had some kind of breakdown. It happens.’ He waited while she digested the logic. Common sense dictated that if de Haan and his Church were truly looking after Henry and concerned with his welfare, she didn’t need to concern herself about him any longer. The presence of the bible was a clear indication that they already had some kind of relationship, and were probably the best people to care for him. But were they? Her suspicions, already stirred by de Haan’s changing accent and Quine’s palpable aura of menace, were increasing steadily.

‘Henry might have asked him to keep callers away,’ Palmer continued. ‘Breakdowns and stress affect people in different ways. Some let it all out, others just want to find somewhere to hide.’

‘Well, thanks for that input, Doctor Palmer,’ Riley said dryly. ‘And here was I thinking you were going to tell me my suspicions were absolutely correct and the whole thing was a conspiracy. Why do you think the men in the van know about you?’

‘Because when you came to the office, I got a tingly feeling in my neck. Never fails me.’

‘Tingly as in-?’

‘The white van. It stopped along the street after you arrived. Same colour, same tinted windows. Where I come from, only people with something to hide use tinted glass.’

‘But it was just a van. The streets are full of them.’ Even as she said it, she knew it wasn’t as simple as that. People like Palmer seemed to operate on a different wavelength to the rest of humanity. In this case he had been right. It explained why he had seemed so thoughtful when she walked into his office.

‘The passenger window was down a couple of inches and the bloke inside was watching your car. He was trying to look casual but he got careless.’ Palmer made it sound like a criminal offence. ‘When they took off after you, I decided to follow. They tailed you right back here. Definitely suspicious.’

‘I didn’t notice.’

‘No reason why you should. Spotting a tail in busy traffic is a tough job. But I’ve had the training,’ he added smugly.

Riley was annoyed with herself; she had been so fixated on finding out what Henry could have known about Katie, she had totally missed the procession behind her. She went back over her movements for the past two days, trying to work out how long the van might have been there. Nothing came to mind.

‘Thanks, I owe you,’ she said, and meant it. Such carelessness could have been serious. ‘What about the number… did your friend in the ministry of mystery registration numbers find out who it belongs to?’

Palmer shook his head. ‘It belongs to a Fiat Punto written off seven months ago.’

Riley frowned. ‘I thought you said you knew something about them.’

‘I do. I know that whoever these people are, they’re definitely not legal. Now all we’ve got to do is find out who they are and want they want.’

A hundred yards away, the white van idled at the kerb, shielded from Riley’s flat by a large removals lorry. The driver, Meaker, looked at his colleague for instructions. He wasn’t empowered to make decisions, and was quietly hoping he wasn’t about to get the blame for losing the woman outside the park.

‘She had help.’ Quine spoke dispassionately. He kicked some leaf mould from one boot, where he’d been running through the trees. ‘She had to, disappearing like that.’

‘Should we go and look? They could be up there,’ Meaker ventured, eager to encourage the deflection of responsibility.

Quine shook his head, his jaw muscles moving. ‘No. She’ll keep for later. Her and whoever helped her.’

Henry’s house looked undisturbed and empty, with no obvious signs of activity. Riley eased the Golf into a space eighty yards from the entrance and waited. It was late afternoon and the suburban road was quiet and deserted, apart from Palmer, who was checking the area on foot. It could have been her imagination or the effects of the dull weather, but she thought the house now wore the unique air of desolation which seems to cloak deserted buildings when their human occupants are not coming back.

She joined Palmer on the pavement as he came abreast of the car.

‘This should do,’ he said. They were close enough to the house to pick the car up in a hurry, yet sufficiently far away for it to be missed by anyone keeping watch on the front door. ‘If anybody has got the place under surveillance, they’ll expect us to park up close.’

They had decided earlier to hit the two houses — the neighbour’s and Henry’s — simultaneously. They each carried clipboards and were trying to look like canvassers working the street. Privately, Riley didn’t think Palmer looked like any canvasser she had ever seen, but no doubt he would argue that he would get by on charm. Part of the plan was for him to work that charm on the Neighbourhood Watch supremo, while Riley got inside Henry’s place. She hadn’t been able to think of a logical reason for coming back so soon after her last visit, so it would be better if the elderly neighbour didn’t see her.

Riley turned down Henry’s drive, the gravel crunching loudly underfoot. If anyone was watching, it would look too suspicious if she kept to the grass, so she gritted her teeth and marched along as if she had every right to be there. Off to her right, Palmer was doing the same. She reached the front door and pressed the bell. Count to thirty. Press again. Count another twenty for luck. No sounds from inside and no sign of movement through the slit windows either side of the door. The corner of an envelope was protruding from the letterbox, which meant the post hadn’t been touched today. She heard Palmer pounding on the door on the other side of the fence and whistling cheerfully, already playing his part to distract attention from Riley.

The garage doors were still shut, so she walked over and looked through the crack. It showed the same empty space and the same oil tray with its glutinous black deposit, the surface now covered by a scum of dust and bits of leaf. She walked round to the back and peered through the honeysuckle-clad gate, one ear cocked for noises. It would be crass to go charging through the house only to find the old neighbour giving the cat an early tea.

She crossed the patio to the kitchen door. The same shards of glass were on the floor, except now a faint outline of a dried footprint showed alongside them. It had probably been there on her first visit but it had been too damp to see clearly. Judging by the size, which was at least a nine, it had not been made by the old lady.

Riley tried the door. It was unlocked. She wiped her feet carefully on a small brown mat, stepped over the slivers of glass and looked around. A fork was lying in the middle of the work surface, with remnants of what looked like cat food stuck to the prongs. An empty dish stood nearby, licked clean save for a smear of dried jelly.

She did a rapid scout of the ground floor. Out of the kitchen down a carpeted hallway, into a living room on one side and a dining room on the other. A downstairs cloakroom opened off the entrance lobby on one side, with stairs nearby, and across from it and looking out onto the front, a large study. A room to come back to.

Back out and across the lobby and up the stairs. There was a double twist in the staircase leading to a landing. She didn’t like the idea of that open space above her, but there was no choice other than to keep going. Four bedrooms, ranging from master to small-ish, with no signs of regular occupancy in the first three. A toilet, bathroom and airing cupboard. A faint trace of soap or air-freshener hovering in the atmosphere. And something else she couldn’t place. Musty, like the inside of an old wardrobe.