SEVENTY-FIVE

‘Just you and me, Amber. There’s no one else inside this house.’

Even though the space at the top of the house was little more than a crawlspace, Josh had gone inside the loft with his Maglite. He’d walked through the entire building swiftly and silently while Amber waited in the kitchen, holding her breath and anticipating the sound of a struggle from upstairs. But she’d only heard Josh once, opening the doors of the walk-in wardrobe. He was the third man in a single day to search the premises for an intruder.

Josh slumped into an easy chair in the living room and the leather upholstery wheezed around his shoulders. He was relieved to know his client was safe, she knew that. Josh made her feel safe and she didn’t have the courage yet to ask him how long he could stay with her at the farmhouse. She knew he was in demand, mostly protecting the children of the super-rich from kidnap. For the first two years after her emancipation from Knacker and Fergal, she had been constantly surrounded by people. In her third year, she had wanted to be left alone and had begun to believe the advice of the police that Fergal was long dead. But she now found herself reconsidering her decision to not employ a permanent bodyguard in Devon.

When she’d first met Josh, two years ago, after the publication advance and newspaper serial fee had come through and she was able to privately hire someone to look for Fergal, to augment the unsuccessful police manhunt, Amber had struggled to believe that Josh had ever been in the military, let alone the special forces. He wasn’t tall and didn’t look athletic; his body was firm, but bulky, like the old-school English cricket players that her dad had idolized. His hair had gone and he invariably wore an innocuous Gore-Tex coat over loose-fitting black trousers, hiking boots on his feet. But one consultation covering her personal safety, changing her identity, and how he had tracked criminals and their kidnap victims, had dispelled all of her doubts about his expertise.

‘The only room I haven’t checked is the locked one.’

‘Study.’

‘The study. But there is no one in your room. I even looked under the bed, but there is no under-your-bed. It’s like a solid plinth.’

‘For good reason. And before you get comfortable, can I see for myself? Or I’ll never sleep.’

‘Of course.’ He stood up. ‘Follow me.’ And paused to eye the gun on the black marble kitchen counter. ‘Either put that away or give it to me. Just knowing it’s here is the end of my career. You know that. I’m going to need to get rid of it soon, Amber.’

When you find him. That’s what they’d agreed as a compromise.

Now the danger had passed, though perhaps there had been no danger, Amber was reluctant to touch the gun. Her genuine reticence about firearms seemed to be the sole factor reassuring Josh about her possession of the weapon; he was happy to pocket the gun and would replace it for her inside the case. ‘Just show me where you keep it.’

‘I’m sorry, Josh.’

‘For what?’

‘Wasting your time.’

‘Your personal safety and peace of mind is not a waste of my time. I was in Worcester on your account anyway, but I’ll be billing you for the digression.’

‘A lead?’

‘Thought it might have been. But alas no. I received information about an assault. The attacker’s description was not dissimilar to our man. Tall. Transient. Facial disfigurement. Even ginger. Police got him. But not our boy. This chap once had his cheeks sliced back to his ears with a Stanley knife by football hooligans in Cardiff. They were old scars.’

‘Jesus Christ.’

‘I sometimes wish he’d stop by and say enough is enough, people.’

‘I never know where Jesus fits into all this.’

Josh stayed silent and led the way up through the house.

‘God, Jesus, whatever,’ she said, reticent but unwilling to change the subject. ‘I mean, I believe now. You know?’ It was awkward for her to talk like this, and Josh was never going to be the ideal participant in a discussion of this nature. But it had been a long time since she’d had a conversation with anyone, and maybe that was why she needed him to listen. ‘I know that there is something else, after this life. But I’m not sure what.’

‘Let’s hope your brush with the other side is not all there is, eh?’

Josh had always been an understanding ally; he had two daughters, the eldest was Amber’s age. He knew about her experiences in great detail and sometimes she sensed the profound effect they had upon him. Once, Amber had even seen him wipe an eye clear of tears with a thumb, while they went through the evidence about what had happened to the other victims of 82 Edgehill Road. Back then, Amber pretended she hadn’t noticed Josh’s distress, but his tearful reaction had endeared him to her, and his involvement had remained personal. Fathers with daughters. My own would have been the same.

‘Beats looking after the brats of the rich every day, eh?’ he’d said when he finally accepted her custom. Across two weeks he’d deliberated the idea and potential consequences of taking her on as a client; the delay on his decision was due to his reservations about the other things that she had claimed about her time in the house in Birmingham. A familiar anxiety now bustled anew inside Amber: that if she kept pushing at that side of her experience, one of the few people she could trust might abandon her.

They arrived on the first floor of the farmhouse and began searching the rooms again. After they’d completed a search of the second bedroom, including a check of every window lock, Josh spoke without looking at her. ‘I know you think you saw things, unnatural things, in that place, Amber. Saw them and heard them as clearly as you can see and hear me now. And I don’t know how you came to learn certain things about that house that happened years before you were ever there. But none of that helps me.’

He was almost telling her off; she had wrenched him out of Worcester, had screamed at him on the phone, had doubted him.

‘I’m sorry I lost my temper, Josh. I never meant anything by it. I was just so certain that he was here. I was frightened. I don’t doubt you, you know that. It means a great deal to me that you came.’

Josh checked behind the curtains of the second spare room, and nodded in acknowledgement.

Amber worked her fingers into knots, squeezed them tight, and was unaffected by the pain. ‘I once thought that I was seeing things that weren’t there, and also hearing things that weren’t possible. And I am not an irrational person. I was not irrational then. Everyone thinks I was, but I was not. The fact that I rationalized everything and didn’t trust my instincts put me in hell in the first place. My instincts are all I have left, Josh. And I was so sure that I saw him today.’

Josh turned to look at her. ‘He’s not here, Amber. He could not be here. Or even in Devon. I know you are here, and my knowledge of your whereabouts has not been compromised. Your barrister knows you are here, but she would not divulge these details either. Your agent knows you are here, but wouldn’t dare jeopardize her cash cow. Peter St John, does he now know that you are here?’

‘Not yet. But I have to tell him. He’s coming to see me next weekend.’

‘He still chasing a new book?’

Amber nodded. ‘But we’re only catching up on loose ends.’

‘I see. Something I should know about?’

Amber shook her head. ‘I still want the parts of the story that are incomplete. About the first victims.’

‘Which is why you’ve carted all those files into your study.’

Amber nodded, but smarted at Josh’s clear disapproval of her continuing research into the history of 82 Edgehill Road.

Josh sighed and shook his head. ‘What I am alluding to is the improbability of your being discovered. The low risk. It is possible that one of us who knows you live here has been hacked, but I doubt Fergal Donegal would have the wherewithal to do that, or know anyone who might do something like that on his behalf.

‘Remember, he only ever had tenuous links with organized criminals from England, Kosovo and Albania, at a peripheral franchise level. He was small time and only ever on probation for Andrei Makarov. We know he was done a big favour with the loan of the two girls. A favour to be paid back once he’d recruited local talent. Fergal failed as soon as he began. Because he was a psychopath. The kind that ends up in prison, over and over again, who never thinks about the consequences of his violent, impulsive actions. He is not the kind of psycho who ends up in a boardroom running an international company.

‘So Fergal finding you down here, by calling upon investigative criminal resources, is an unlikely scenario. Nor was his arsehole in crime, Knacker, top rank. He was an even smaller potato. If anyone discovered your new identity, and where you are, it would most probably be a journalist. Not Fergal Donegal. And if the press have rumbled this rather tasteful set-up you have down here at the seaside, why have they not gone public?’ Josh stopped talking and came to a standstill outside the study.

Amber nodded. ‘I know. It doesn’t make sense. Not in a logical way. But . . .’

Josh raised his eyebrows. ‘Can I see the incident room?’

Amber unlocked the door. ‘You’re probably going to need a drink afterwards.’

‘My thoughts exactly. What have you got in?’