Dead Tomorrow

111

Lynn was in her room, zipping shut her overnight bag, when the doorbell rang.

The sound shrilled through her veins. Shrilled through her soul. She froze in total, blind panic.

Was it the police again?

Then she stepped across to the window and peered cautiously down. Outside was a turquoise and white Streamline taxi estate car.

Relief flooded through her. She had not been expecting a taxi, but that was fine, that was good, she realized as her thoughts clarified. A taxi! Yes, very good! A taxi meant that Marlene Hartmann had nothing to hide. A taxi was open. If she was happy for them to be picked up in a taxi, then everything had to be absolutely fine.

Sod you and your damn scaremongering, Detective Superintendent Grace, she thought. Then she rapped hard on the window. The driver, a man in his forties in a bomber jacket, who was standing outside the front door, looked up and Lynn signalled to him that they were coming.

Then she carried hers and Caitlin’s bags downstairs with a sudden burst of optimism in her heart. It was going to be all right. It was going to be fine. Everything would be brilliant. She was going to give Caitlin the best Christmas ever!

‘OK, darling!’ she called out. ‘This is it!’

Caitlin was sitting at the kitchen table, cradling Max on her lap and stroking him, staring at the face of the Romanian girl in the photograph. The glass of glucose water and the antibiotic pills from Ross Hunter lay untouched in front of her.

‘Have you done Max’s food and water, darling?’ Lynn asked.

Caitlin looked at her blankly.

‘Darling?’

Suddenly, Lynn’s optimism dipped as she saw the confusion in her daughter’s face.

‘Don’t worry, I’ll do it!’

She quickly filled up the water bowl, topped the food up in the dispenser, lifted Max gently from Caitlin’s arms, gave him a nuzzle and a kiss and set him down.

‘Guard the house, Max, OK! Remember what you’re descended from!’

Normally Caitlin would grin whenever she said that. But there was no reaction. Lynn touched her arm gently.

‘OK, angel, drink up and take your pills, and let’s rock and roll.’

‘I’m not thirsty.’

‘It’ll make you feel better. You can’t eat anything this morning, before the op, remember?’

Reluctantly, Caitlin drank. Holding the glass, she half stood up, then crashed back down heavily in the chair, slopping some of the liquid over the rim.

Lynn stared at her for a moment, panic rising again. She held the glass, helping Caitlin get the rest of the fluid and the pills down, then she ran outside and asked the taxi driver to help her.

Two minutes later, with their luggage in the boot, Lynn sat holding Caitlin’s hand in the back of the cab as it pulled away.

A hundred yards behind them, the green Volkswagen Passat radioed that Target Two was on the move and read out the index of the taxi.

From his desk in MIR One, Grace ordered them to follow and keep them in sight.

‘Where are we going?’ Lynn asked the driver.

‘It’s a surprise!’

She caught his grin in his mirror.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’m not allowed to tell you.’

‘What?’

‘It’s all a bit cloak and dagger. James Bond stuff.’

‘Die Another Day,’ murmured Caitlin, through half-closed eyes. She was now scratching her thighs, harder and harder and harder.

They turned left into Carden Avenue, then left again on to the London Road, heading south towards the centre of Brighton.

Lynn looked at the driver’s ID card mounted on the dash. Read his name. Mark Tuckwell.

‘All right, Mr Bond,’ Lynn said. ‘Are we in for a long journey?’

‘Not this part of it. I-’ He was interrupted by his phone ringing. He answered curtly, ‘I’m driving. Call you back in a bit.’

‘Want to give me any clues?’ Lynn asked.

‘Chill, woman!’ Caitlin murmured.

Lynn sat in silence as they headed down towards Preston Circus, then turned right at the lights and went up New England Hill, under the viaduct. Then they turned sharp left. Moments later they crested the hill and began descending, down towards Brighton Station. The driver stopped at a junction, then carried on down the hill and suddenly pulled over sharply and halted by a row of bollards recently installed to prevent cars dropping off here.

A short man, about fifty years old, in a cheap beige suit, with greasy hair and a beaky nose, hurried over and opened Lynn’s door.

‘You come with me,’ he said in broken English. ‘Quickly, quickly, please! I am Grigore!’ He gave a servile, buck-toothed smile.

Staring at him in bewilderment, Lynn said, ‘Where – where are we going?’

He almost yanked her out of the car in his agitation, with an apologetic smile, into the bitterly cold noon air.

The taxi driver removed their bags from the boot.

None of them noticed the green Passat driving slowly past.

In the Incident Room, Grace’s radio beeped.

‘Roy Grace,’ he answered.

‘They’re getting out at Brighton Station,’ the surveillance officer informed him. ‘In the wrong place.’

Roy was thrown into total confusion. Brighton Station?

‘What the fuck?’ he said, thinking aloud.

There were four trains an hour to London from there. Romeo Sierra Zero Eight Alpha Mike Lima was still heading towards the M25. All his theories about a clinic in Sussex were suddenly down the khazi. Were they going to a clinic in London?

‘Follow them on foot,’ he said, in sudden total panic. ‘Don’t lose them. Whatever you do, don’t sodding lose them.’

With Grigore holding one bag and Lynn holding the other, dragging a stumbling Caitlin between them, they hurried across the concourse of Brighton Station. Every few seconds the man threw a nervous glance over his shoulder.

‘Quick!’ he implored. ‘Quick!’

‘I can’t go any bloody quicker!’ Lynn panted, totally bewildered.

They hurried beneath the clock suspended from the glass roof, past the news stall and the café, then along, past the far platform.

‘Where are we going?’ Lynn asked.

‘Quick!’ he replied.

‘I need to sit down,’ Caitlin said.

‘In minute you sit. OK?’

They stumbled out into the drop-off area beside the car park exit, past several waiting cars and taxis, and reached a dusty brown Mercedes. He popped open the boot, hefted their bags in, then opened a rear door and manoeuvred Caitlin inside. Lynn clambered in on the far side. Grigore jumped into the driver’s seat, started the car and drove like a demon away from the station.

The surveillance officer, DC Peter Woolf, stood and watched in horror, sensing his promotion prospects disappearing down that ramp, and frantically radioed his colleague in the Passat to get round to the car park exit.

But the Passat was stuck on the far side of the station in a queue of frustrated drivers, waiting for the imbecile in an articulated lorry that was blocking the entire street to complete his reversing manoeuvre.