I Know You Know Read online

  “Always did.”

  At the end of the episode, Danny says, “Who would be threatening them?”

  “I have no idea. Somebody who doesn’t like meddling, I expect.”

  “Let sleeping dogs lie,” Danny says as he pulls into a parking space outside the jail.

  “Correct.” Fletcher looks at the high-security wall in front of them and thinks of the man behind it they’ve come to visit. “I’m looking forward to hearing what this paragon of virtue can tell us.”

  As they head between prison buildings, Fletcher ducks his head into his scarf, unsure of whether what’s buffeting him is snow, sleet, hail, or rain. He and Danny follow the prison officer into B Block, a low-security wing where they’re due to meet Damien Saint, whose criminal record shows a repetitive string of time-share frauds and an incompetent attempt at armed robbery.

  Fletcher and Danny are shown into a small room where a table and four chairs are bolted to the floor and a panic strip runs across two walls, a blue neon glow threading through the center of it. They sit and wait for the prison officer to bring Saint to them. Through a barred window, the view includes a slice of the roof of another prison block, a section of the bladed wire that runs along the prison’s external wall, and a metallic sky.

  The prison officer ushers Saint in. Clean-shaven and sallow-skinned, he’s a skinny fellow in a prison regulation pale blue shirt and beltless blue jeans that hang off his frame. He has buzz-cut white hair on the back and sides of his head and a shiny pate above. His chin is receding. His eyebrows are dark gray and bushy, and the skin under his eyes is baggy and loose. There’s something unremarkable yet depressing about him that reminds Fletcher of a dozen other small-time criminals he’s met over the years. The only notable thing about him is that he’s missing two fingers on his left hand.

  Saint sees Fletcher looking. “Motorcycle accident,” he says. “Before you ask.”

  “You’re assuming I’m interested.” Fletcher takes off his glasses and rubs them clean on a corner of his scarf. He squints at Saint as he does so, as if that sharpens his view of the man. In fact, it doesn’t. Without his glasses on, Saint’s face blurs formlessly.

  There was a time when Fletcher enjoyed the game of interviewing, when he watched his interviewee with the implacable gaze of a large cat who knows there’ll be playing before slaying and is looking forward to it, but over the years he’s become tired of the process, tired of the fact that if you get rid of one of them, another nasty piece of work just shuffles in to take his or her place.

  A smile flickers and expires on Saint’s mouth as he realizes this meeting might not be the interesting break in routine he’d been anticipating. Fletcher notices the dying pleasantry as he replaces his glasses and feels nothing but contempt for Saint because he’s obviously weak. White collars are often like this: pleasers, ultimately, many of them. Wanting to do well for themselves to show off to friends and family, but without the smarts or the work ethic to achieve it legally. Even Danny can’t be bothered to play nice.

  “Peter Dale,” he says to Saint. “Remember him?”

  “I knew him back in the eighties. We did a bit of business together.”

  “What kind of business?”

  “We had a share in a pub. He screwed me over when he took off.”

  Fletcher is roused to raise his eyebrows at the note of self-pity. “You think that’s unfair, do you?” he asks. He plants his elbows on the table and leans toward Saint. Saint blinks and swallows and recrosses his legs but says nothing, and it’s a subservient enough response that Fletcher loses interest in going in for the kill. He needs Saint to talk, not quiver.

  “What was Peter Dale’s setup?”

  “He had an office on Cheltenham Road, above the barber’s by the arches. I went there maybe once or twice, I think.” Saint’s voice slows as caution sets in. Obviously, Saint’s not sure why he’s here and he’s too chicken to ask outright. Fletcher expects a bit of haziness to set in around his recollections from this point.

  Fletcher knows the barber’s outfit Saint’s referring to. It’s still in business, but the frontage needs repainting, and the turning red and white signs out the front are encased in tubes yellowed by age and pollution. There are three or four chairs crammed into the narrow space inside. So far as he knows, the place has been owned and run for what seems like forever by a heavyset asthmatic called Wilfred Jones. It is well known to police as a money-laundering spot for his family’s activities.

  “Do you remember Dale’s assistant?” Danny asks Saint.

  “Yeah, I remember her. Good girl, she was. Name of Heather or Holly or something.”

  “Hazel,” Danny says.

  “That’s right, Hazel. I remember she got us coffee from that Turkish place up the road. Peter loved that coffee. I used to wonder if he missed that in Venezuela, though he made off with enough that he could probably afford to have it shipped over. Thought of that as a line of inquiry, have you? Tracing shipments of Turkish coffee to Venezuela?”

  Saint cackles at his own attempt at wit. No wonder he got caught, Fletcher thinks. He’s a fucking idiot. “What was the relationship like between Dale and Hazel Collins?” he asks.

  “Secretary. She did his typing. Answered the phone. Did the filing. Got sandwiches. That sort of thing.”

  “Anything more?”

  Saint shakes his head. “Not that I know of.”

  “Nothing more personal?”

  Saint snorts. “Peter didn’t mix business and pleasure. He had prettier birds to chase, anyway. Hazel wasn’t really his type.”

  “Who did he chase?” Fletcher asks. The case files suggested that police hadn’t found evidence of a relationship at the time Dale disappeared.

  “Seriously?” asks Saint. “You don’t know this? I thought you lot investigated him?”

  Fletcher waits for Saint’s attempt at triumphalism to get back in the box where it belongs. To hurry the process along, he’d like to seize the guy by the neck and give him a shake, but he treats him to a hard stare instead.

  Saint says, “If you wanted to find the money, you should have looked at the divorce. Pete got divorced from his wife about three months before he disappeared. She was a girl-next-door type called Rhonda. I can’t remember her maiden name. Not his usual type, I don’t know where he found her. But if you want to make money disappear, a sham divorce is how you do it. The authorities won’t dig too deep. I always thought she’d made her way to join Pete.”

  Fletcher doesn’t answer. He’s thinking. He stands up. “Let’s go,” he says to Danny. He bangs on the door to request that they are let out.

  Saint’s face falls. “Is that it? You’ll put in a good word for me, then. I’ve got a parole hearing soon.”

  “I think you’ve been watching too many TV cop shows,” Fletcher says. “What makes you think I would do that?” When the guard has let him and Danny out, he enjoys the sound of the door shutting behind him and the way it blunts Saint’s shouts of protest.

  “Remind me who was running the Dale case?” Danny asks.

  “DS called Chase. I had an email this morning to say he’s six feet under.”

  “Helpful.”

  Fletcher nods. Sarcasm feels about right for today. As they walk to the car, he notices Danny limping. “Hurt yourself?”

  “Training. Busted my knee.”

  Fletcher shakes his head. The problem with a new and younger wife, he thinks, is that they make unreasonable demands on a man in his late middle age. Danny has given the new Mrs. Fryer a baby and now she wants him running half marathons, too.

  “Don’t let her kill you off,” he says.

  Danny grins. “Better that than dying of boredom. You’ve got to live.”

  Fletcher doesn’t answer. He supposes it depends what you mean by living. He thinks of his own empty home and feels a small stab of jealousy.

  In the car on the way back from the casino, Fletcher holds the box of videotapes on his lap. The tapes rattle e
very time Danny steers the car around a pothole. He drives like a boy racer. When they reach Southmead Station, Fletcher lugs the tapes upstairs and oversees as they are entered into evidence. He knows when to follow procedure. As soon as they are logged, he signs them out and tucks them under his desk. Danny observes but doesn’t comment.

  Fletcher raps on the open door to Smail’s office and pokes his head around it. Smail is on the phone. He looks shattered. The fingertips of one hand are buried in the flesh on his forehead. He indicates with the other that Fletcher should sit.

  “What have you got for me, John?” he asks when he puts down the phone.

  “Video footage of Jessica Paige at the Paradise Casino on Sunday evening.”

  “Classy,” Smail says. “While her kid’s out running wild. Does it give her an alibi?”

  “A partial alibi. She left the casino at 22:13, so about seventy-two minutes are unaccounted for between then and her arrival back at the estate. She left the casino in a car with an unknown male.”

  “Have you asked her who he is?”

  “Not yet, but I will.”

  “Good. What did you make of her?”

  “She was under the influence of something.”

  “Does she work?”

  “No. Lives on benefits.”

  “Turns tricks?”

  “Maybe. But if she does, I don’t think she uses the flat. Danny will run the plate from the car that picked her up at the casino and go through the rest of the CCTV. I’ll get somebody to see if any road cameras picked up the car she left the casino in. When she arrived back at the estate she was in a taxi, so she switched vehicles at some point.”

  “Do you like her for this?”

  Fletcher balks at the question. Infanticide is vanishingly rare, even amongst unfit mothers. “Jury’s still out, boss,” he says. Smail nods.

  “Sidney Noyce,” he says. “Have you come across him?”

  Fletcher has excellent recall. Sid the Village, he thinks. He says, “Cody Swift—the kid, friend of the other two—he mentioned a man called Sid when I interviewed him.”

  “A witness says she saw Noyce taking the same path the boys did shortly after them on Sunday evening,” Smail says. He raises his eyebrows at Fletcher, who nods to indicate that he recognizes the significance of this.

  “Action for you,” Smail says and Fletcher bristles, though he doesn’t let it show, because he should be discussing action allocations with Smail in his role as deputy investigating officer, not being handed them.

  “Interview Noyce. Go and see him at home today. In fact, go now.”

  “Can we discuss strategy when I get back?”

  “Of course.” The smile Smail gives him looks more like a wince. Fletcher feels like Smail is giving him responsibility with one hand and snatching it away with the other. The thought blackens his mood as he heads out, but he has a call to make that requires all his focus. He walks out of the station and down Southmead Road. There’s a public phone box a quarter of a mile away, opposite the hospital. He yanks the door open and steps in. He dials a number he knows by heart and pumps a few coins in.

  “It’s John,” he says to the man who answers. “Can you talk?”

  “Is there a problem?”

  Felix Abernathy and Fletcher are, by arrangement, very careful about how they communicate and when. This phone call breaks the protocol they’ve agreed on.

  “I’m on a pay phone, don’t worry. Can’t you hear the fucking traffic?” Fletcher shouts as an ambulance pulls out of the hospital, with sirens wailing.

  Felix Abernathy has been a presence in his life since Fletcher took a bung from him six months ago. Fletcher was handsomely rewarded for burying a charge against a man who had hurt one of the girls working for Felix. He didn’t hurt her badly, just a bit of roughing up, but it was a delicate situation, Felix explained, because the man had a public profile. He was extremely contrite. He would be very grateful for a blind eye. Fletcher prevaricated at first, but was assured Felix would be making sure this man didn’t come near his girls again, and that the girl would be handsomely compensated, too. In the end he felt that everybody involved would come out better off this way than if it was dragged through the system.

  Fletcher knew his loyalty had been bought that day, but he felt he could handle it. He had a feeling in his bones that Felix Abernathy might turn out to be a very good contact to have. Managing him felt like a similar challenge to managing some of the senior officers in CID: a game Fletcher would relish, and one he intended to win.

  He’s about to play an ace.

  “What’s happening?” Felix asks.

  “It’s a potential problem. There are CCTV tapes of you and Jessy Paige together at the Paradise on Sunday night.” A truck brakes noisily beside Fletcher, and Felix’s response is lost. “What’s that?” Fletcher shouts.

  “Lose them.”

  “Well, as you can imagine, that won’t be easy. They’re in evidence.”

  “Not my problem.”

  “I’m calling because it is your problem. Can you give Jessy Paige an alibi for the evening?”

  “I can’t be associated with this; I can’t be anywhere near it. It would be damaging to business.”

  Fletcher catches his breath.

  “I found him,” he says, though he didn’t mean to. “I found her boy.”

  There is a moment of silence on the line before Felix says, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know that was you.”

  “It was all hands on deck. Every man out there searching, and I found them. Charlie was alive. There were these flowers. They were so fucking orange.”

  “Look, tell me when the tapes are gone. John? Are you there?”

  Fletcher rallies. “Like I said, it might not be that easy. I was wondering what you know about Jessy Paige. Any reason to think she might harm the kid?”

  “Drop it.”

  Fletcher hears the threat and backs down. “Okay,” he says. “So I’m going to see what I can do about the tapes, but no promises. This was a courtesy call to keep you in the loop.”

  Fletcher hangs up before Felix can reply. Apart from having a bit of an emotional moment—unprecedented for him—Fletcher feels that went well. Smail might be trying to keep him on his back, but Felix Abernathy will not do the same.

  Fletcher finds Danny leaning against his car smoking a cigarette and chatting to another detective on the squad and thinks that the pair of them look like flash gits. Fletcher sometimes feels an urge to shake his childhood friend off and find another partner, but loyalty is a trait he might not be able to replace, and he needs it like he needs oxygen, just as Felix does.

  Fletcher takes the wheel for the drive from the station to the Glenfrome Estate. By the time they arrive the rain is bucketing down. Somebody has dumped two armchairs, a chipped bathtub, and a plastic Christmas tree in the middle of the grass. They remind Fletcher of desert flora that sprouts strangely and garishly after a downpour.

  The tower blocks loom tall and bleak. They are lined up in two rows—one row of three slightly in front of the other—with uniform distance between them, like soldiers waiting for inspection. Fletcher and Danny pass under a crisp-edged concrete awning to enter Nightingale Tower. The foyer is tiled in sixties patterns that make Fletcher’s brain ache. The colors are vile, amongst them a bright orange that drags his mind back to the discovery of the boys and those poppies that hazed his view. He blinks the image away. He wonders when he’ll ever be rid of it.

  Fletcher and Danny take the elevator to the thirteenth floor. They brandish their ID cards at the Noyces’ door. Valerie Noyce glances at them anxiously before telling them who she is and offering a limp handshake, fingers held out cautiously as if she’s not used to formal introductions or is expecting a slap on the wrist. Doe-eyed, Fletcher thinks as he studies her. The definition of. Her eyes are very dark brown, fringed with long lashes. She has a rosebud mouth and a crooked nose.

  She shows them into the lounge. Danny crosses the room to
look out the window and says, “Lovely view, Mrs. Noyce. Do you get good sunsets?”

  “We do, yes, when it’s not raining.” She laughs. It’s high-pitched. She’s nervous. Rain hits the window like a shower of pebbles, and she jumps.

  Phil Noyce is a bear of a man, taller and wider than both Fletcher and Danny. He gets up off a sofa and stands beside Danny at the window. He blocks a lot of light.

  A large table fills at least a third of the space in the room. A sewing machine and some dowdy garments are laid on top of it. It looks to Fletcher like a bit of a cottage industry—repairs or alterations, maybe. Valerie Noyce shoves the garments out of their way and invites them to sit at the table. She offers tea. Fletcher doesn’t want it, but it’s good to accept hospitality because it oils the wheels. “Milk and two sugars, please,” he says, and she smiles as if she’s pleased with him.

  “Were you both here on Sunday evening?” Danny asks.

  “We went to the bingo,” Valerie Noyce replies. “Down the social club.”

  “What time?”

  “We must have left at about quarter to eight and we got home at half eleven. A bit later than normal.”

  “Was Sidney here when you got home?”

  She nods. “In his room.”

  “Did you see him?”

  “No. I just called out, ‘You all right, love?’ and he said, ‘Yeah,’ and I said, ‘Didn’t you get the ketchup, then?’ because I seen he didn’t eat his dinner. He doesn’t eat lasagna without ketchup, so he was going to get some while we was out. And he said, ‘No. Shop was shut because of a flooding, so I had cereal instead.’ After that, we just said good night.”

  “Did you notice anything different about him?”

  “Everything seemed normal. I washed up his bowl and spoon and we went to bed ourselves.”

  “We are hoping to speak to Sidney,” Fletcher says.

  The shadows in the room shift as Phil Noyce turns away from the window. “Sid’s in his room watching his program,” he says. “He won’t talk to you until it’s finished. There’s no point in trying.”

  “What time does it finish?” Danny asks.