Peter James - Dead Man's Grip

A tall man in a checked sports jacket, plain white shirt and brown tie, ambled over to her. He spoke with a Brooklyn accent.

‘Mrs Chase?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m Detective Investigator Lanigan from the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office. I’ve been asked by your police department in Sussex, England, to take care of you while you’re over here.’

She stared back at him. In his fifties, she guessed, he had a powerful physique, a pockmarked face beneath a greying brush-cut and a concerned but friendly expression.

‘I understand you have the home address of Mr and Mrs Revere for me?’ she said.

‘Yes. I’m going to take you there.’

She shook her head. ‘I have a car booked. I need to go alone.’

‘I can’t allow you to do that, Mrs Chase. That’s not going to happen.’

The firm way he spoke made her realize that the decision had been taken and was not going to be reversed.

Carly thought hard for a moment. ‘Look, OK, follow me to their place, but at least let me go in alone. I can handle myself. Can I please do that?’

He stared at her for some moments.

‘It’s about a two-and-a-half-hour drive from here. We’ll go in convoy. I’ll wait outside, but here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to text me every fifteen minutes so I know you’re OK. If I don’t get a text I’m coming in. Understand what I’m saying?’

‘Do I have any option?’

‘Sure, you do. I can have Immigration put you on the first available flight back to London.’

‘Thanks,’ she said.

‘You’re welcome, lady.’

In the back of the Lincoln Town Car it was dark and silent. Carly sat immersed in her thoughts, occasionally sipping water from one of the small bottles in the rack in the central armrest. Maybe she should have said yes to the New York detective and let Immigration put her on a flight back to England. She felt a lump in her throat and a chill of fear running through her, worsened by the cold air-conditioning in the car.

The black leather seats and blacked-out windows made the interior feel as gloomy as her mood. The driver seemed in a bad mood, too, and had barely said two words to her since leaving the airport. Every few minutes his phone rang. He would gabble a few angry words in a language she didn’t know and hang up.

Each time it irritated her more. She needed silence. Needed to think. She’d phoned home again as soon as she’d got into the car and her mother told her all was fine. She reminded her about Tyler’s dental appointment in the morning and wished her good luck with the scan.

Her grandmother had died of colon cancer and now there was something in her mother’s tummy her doctor did not like the look of. Since Kes had died, her mother had been the total and utter rock in her life. And if anything happened to Carly, her mother would become Tyler’s rock too. The thought that she could get sick and die was too much for Carly to bear at this moment. She just fervently hoped and prayed the scan wouldn’t show anything.

Then she turned her thoughts back to what she was going to say when she arrived at the Revere family’s front door. If they even let her in.

From time to time she turned her head and looked out of the rear window. The dark grey sedan which Detective Investigator Lanigan was driving remained steadily on their tail. She felt inhibited by his presence and her instinct was that she had to be seen to be alone if she was going to have any chance with Fernanda Revere.

Most of the time she stared out at a dull landscape of seemingly endless straight road, bordered by green verge and low trees. The sun was setting behind them and dusk was falling rapidly. In another hour it would be dark. In her mind, the meeting with the Reveres was going to have taken place in daylight. She looked at her watch. It was 7.30. She asked the driver what time he expected to arrive.

The surly reply came back, ‘Nine or thereabouts. Lucky this isn’t summer. Be ’bout eleven then. Traffic no good in summer.’

Her headache was worsening by the minute. As were her doubts. All the confidence she’d had earlier today was deserting her. She felt a growing slick of fear inside her. She tried in her mind to reverse the roles. How would she feel in this woman’s situation?

She simply did not know. She felt tempted, suddenly, to ask the driver to turn around and go to the hotel she had booked and forget all about this.

But what then?

Maybe nothing. Maybe those two killings had been coincidental? Maybe they’d been all the revenge the family wanted? But then, thinking more lucidly, she wondered how she would ever know that. How would she stop living in fear?

And she knew that she could not, ever, without resolving this.

Her determination became even stronger. She had the truth on her side. All she had to do was tell the woman the truth.

Suddenly, it seemed only minutes later, they were arriving in a town.

‘East Hampton,’ the driver said in a more friendly tone, as if he’d woken up to the fact that he was close to blowing his chances of a tip.

Carly looked at her watch. It was 8.55 p.m., which meant it was 1.55 a.m. in the UK. Her stomach tightened. Her nerves were in tatters.

Her fear deepened as the car made a right turn in front of a Mobil Oil garage and headed down a leafy lane with a double yellow line in the middle. All her clear thinking suddenly turned into a fog of panic. She was breathing deeper, perspiring, close to hyperventilating. She turned and through the rear window she saw the headlights of Detective Investigator Lanigan’s car following, and now, instead of feeling irritated, she was comforted by his presence.

She felt a lump in her throat and a tightening knot in her stomach. Her hands were shaking. She took a few deep breaths to calm down. She tried to organize her thoughts, to rehearse that crucial way she would introduce herself. The driver’s phone rang again, but as if sensing her mood he killed the call without answering it.

The double yellow line ended and the lane narrowed to single track. In the glare of the headlights Carly saw trim hedges on both sides of them.

The car slowed, then halted. Directly in front of them were tall, closed gates, painted grey, with spikes along the top. There was a speaker panel and a warning sign beside that which said ARMED RESPONSE.

‘Want me to ring?’ the driver asked.

She turned and peered through the rear window and saw that the detective was getting out of his car. Carly climbed out too.

‘Good luck, lady,’ Lanigan said. ‘Let’s see if they let you in. If they do, I’ll be waiting here. I’ll be waiting for that first text in fifteen minutes’ time. You don’t forget that, right?’

She tried to reply, but nothing came out. Her mouth was parched and it felt like there was an iron band around her throat. She nodded.

He entered his number on Carly’s phone and tapped in ‘OK’. ‘That’s what you’re gonna text me, every fifteen minutes.’

The air was still and mild. Carly had dressed casually but conservatively, wearing a lightweight beige mackintosh over a dark grey jacket, plain white blouse, black jeans and black leather boots. Every shred of her confidence seemed to have deserted her and, despite the adrenalin pumping, she felt even more spaced out now. She tried to block from her mind the fact it was past 2 a.m., body time.

She pressed the square metal button. Instantly a light shone in her face. Above it she could see a CCTV camera pointing down at her.

A voice speaking in broken English crackled. ‘Yes, who is this?’

Carly stared straight back at the camera and forced a smile. ‘I’ve come from England to see Mr and Mrs Revere. My name is Carly Chase.’