Way beyond a lie, p.27
Way Beyond A Lie, page 27
‘Well, as I said, my colleagues and I have spent a lot of time, travelled thousands of miles, checking possibilities. And, not to put too fine a point on it, we’ve just about had enough. We need some fresh impetus, another body to share the load. Someone like you, who has a vested interest in first of all finding Carla, and secondly, bringing back pictures for the rest of us to look at. Because, if we don’t find some help soon …’
‘I understand.’ Ross gathered himself, standing just a little bit taller. ‘So, I’d need to check the eleven women from your album and, I’m guessing, you must have some names that none of you have visited yet.’ Oliver nodded, so he carried on. ‘I’m dreading asking but how many are there?’
‘Thirty-seven in total, including the eleven.’
‘Thirty-seven? Jesus! And, dare I ask, where are they? None in Edinburgh, I’ll bet.’
Oliver tapped on the iPad again, opening a different file from his iCloud account. He cross-checked the eleven names against a list, scribbled down the same number of place names, then switched to a different page on the same file. ‘I knew there were none in Edinburgh but, funnily enough, none of them are even in Scotland. The closest one’s in Durham.’
‘And the farthest away?’
‘Penzance.’
‘Magic.’ Ross reached for the iPad. ‘Let’s have a look.’ He scanned the addresses. He didn’t see any point in reading the names, they were all strangers to him. He pushed the device back towards the centre of the table. ‘Two questions jump out at me.’ Oliver spread his hands in a let’s hear them gesture. ‘I’d be surprised if I were the first, dare I say it, victim you’ve approached.’
‘No. You’re the fifth or sixth new person we’ve found since our group formed. But—’
‘They turned you down?’ And when Oliver nodded, Ross asked, ‘Why wouldn’t they help?’
‘Various reasons. Ill-health, state of mind, didn’t want to go there, too scared.’
Ross glanced up as a squall of rain pattered against the window. He reached over and closed the blind. He thought about these other victims and could see their point. All those reasons would have been high on his list if it weren’t for the missing jewellery. ‘Fair enough, I suppose.’ He paused to think before framing his second question. ‘So, all this effort, all this time, and two people dead …’
‘You want to know how many fraudsters we’ve tracked down.’ Ross waited for the answer. ‘Only two.’
Ross felt like he’d been driving a car along a fast, smooth road, when, without any warning, the road surface changed to deep, soft sand and, simultaneously, the vehicle’s tyres lost all their air. His motivation, enthusiasm and desire slewed to an immediate halt.
‘And what happened to them?’
Oliver made a face. ‘Both times, we took our evidence to the police but unfortunately they didn’t take us seriously. Well, not at first anyway. We found the first one in Sheffield. A man who called himself Anthony. The local police told us they would investigate but they couldn’t give it a high priority. We wanted them to carry out what’s called arrest and detain, which is exactly what it sounds like. But what actually happened was they sent along an inexperienced PC, who, as far as we could make out, basically marched up to the front door and asked if Anthony could prove who he was.’
‘It’s stating the bleeding obvious, I know, but surely Anthony’s fake ID would have stood up to scrutiny. Especially from a junior plod.’
‘Of course. Yes. And while the PC was phoning his station for advice—’
‘Anthony did a runner?’
‘Precisely. So, when we found the second person, a woman this time, down in Buckinghamshire, we asked the local police to speak to their counterparts in Sheffield to try to stop the same thing happening again.’
‘Let me guess.’
‘Well, this time we were incredibly unlucky.’ Ross wore a how so? expression. ‘At the very instant the police turned up at the front door, the man of the house was on the phone to his wife. She was in town shopping, and had phoned home to check his collar size or something.’ Now Ross had his head in his hands, peering at Oliver through meshed fingers. ‘So the guy says, “Honey, the police are here. They want to speak to you about something.”’
Ross couldn’t help but smile. ‘Another runner?’
Oliver actually laughed out loud. ‘Yes. But apparently this woman stayed on the phone long enough to tell her husband he was a miserable little toad with bad breath and smelly feet, and she was glad she’d never have to give him a blowjob ever again. You have to see the funny side sometimes or else you’d go insane.’
‘So, in both cases, the baddies just disappeared without trace?’
‘Totally. And I suppose the only upside was that, because of our interventions, two people had narrow escapes. They didn’t lose their life savings.’
‘No. But how terrible must they feel? Their partners vanish. Their futures, their hopes and dreams are shattered. All their trust destroyed.’
‘It’s worse than that.’
‘What do you mean?’
Oliver looked down at the table and took quite a while before eventually replying. ‘Although I know the lady in Sheffield took the view she’d dodged a bullet, the chap in Buckinghamshire was so distraught he attempted to take his own life by jumping off a bridge.’
‘Oh no.’ Ross lifted a hand to his mouth. ‘Is he okay?’
‘Last I heard, he was in a coma. I’ve no idea if he’ll recover.’
Chapter Fifty
The two men talked until well past midnight, fortified by several rounds of coffee, sandwiches and biscuits. The whisky bottle wasn’t called into action again.
They had no idea if Ross would ever find Carla because they couldn’t be certain she was actively scamming another man. And even if she were, did her scam on Ross start first and she moved on to the other man, or vice versa? They had to hope it was the former or she was probably long gone by now.
Ross fetched a road atlas and they plotted all the locations from Leona’s list on a one page map of England and Wales. The red circles were generally widely scattered but there were about a dozen in the south of the country spread across Hampshire, Dorset and Wiltshire. ‘Lots of money down there,’ he said.
‘Yes. It’s an affluent part of the country.’
Throughout their discussions, Ross kept thinking about Alex, and the chance she could be involved. It was a possibility he steadfastly refused to accept. Oliver asked if he had been due to meet her that evening but he said no. ‘When I’ve been to the match, and had a few pints afterwards, she isn’t interested in me, quote, “talking rubbish and breathing beer fumes all over her.”’ Oliver asked a few more questions about Alex, which turned into a debate that became quite heated. Ross eventually accepted he had no choice but to act as though she was involved as he couldn’t run the risk of tipping the gang off about his activities, bearing in mind the fates that had befallen Oliver’s two friends. Oliver also stressed that Ross should make sure he wasn’t off with her, and not to ask her too many questions. Either might make her suspicious.
‘And once I prove she’s innocent, we can’t even laugh about it later as she’ll find out I suspected her. It’ll probably wreck our relationship. Talk about lose–lose?’
‘There’s one thing we must find out, though. Are you certain your phone is not still being tracked? I know Alex found and deleted two apps but could she have left something else on there?’
Ross glanced at his phone and quickly looked away again, as if the device was listening to him. ‘You’re asking the wrong man, I’m afraid. Although I’m becoming more clued up about phones and stuff, I’m still a relative novice.’
‘In which case, why don’t you find someone you trust implicitly to check it out. But, if there is something on there, don’t remove it. That would be a dead giveaway.’ Ross nodded, but he was clearly unhappy about snooping on his girlfriend.
They also spoke about what he should say to Alex if she asked what he’d been up to on Saturday. After all, it was a natural question. They agreed the fewer outright lies Ross told, the better. So, if questioned, he would say he’d developed a blinding headache after the match, only had one drink, gone home and straight to bed. He’d say he felt fine when he woke up on the Sunday morning.
To move away from the subject of Alex, Ross said they should work out a plan of action for visiting this daunting list of locations. ‘I’ll need to make a series of road trips, and it makes sense to go to the closest places first. By my reckoning that’s Durham, this place Pocklington near York, and Bainbridge in the Yorkshire Dales. Neither of which I’ve ever heard of, by the way.’
They discussed Ross’s slight aversion to driving long distances but he said he’d just have to get over it. But they still didn’t have an excuse lined up for him being absent for a few days. And that was only the first trip, possibly of many. Oliver asked if Ross ever travelled on business. ‘Occasionally I travel away with Martin but usually it’s just for the day. I think we did one overnighter in Manchester last year, but that was about it.’ Ross said he would be speaking to Martin anyway, as he’d need time off. ‘Martin’ll help. I’m sure he’ll come up with an idea.’
Oliver tapped a fingernail on the table. ‘It’s just occurred to me. If you’re keeping your trip a secret from Alex, you won’t be able to take your own car. If she is checking up on you, it’s possible she’s monitoring your mileage. In fact, your car may even be bugged.’
‘Be serious, Oliver. This isn’t a Bond movie.’ Then Ross remembered Oliver’s two deceased friends, and he instantly regretted his comment. He placed his hand on the older man’s arm. ‘Sorry. I wasn’t thinking there.’
Oliver busied himself over the map. ‘It’s okay. I know I get carried away, conspiracies round every corner. But I’d rather say something stupid and be proved wrong.’
Then they talked about how Ross would need to spend some time at each location, watching houses from the car until he could see if each man’s wife was Carla. Of course, if he were to be fortunate and the woman of the house appeared immediately, as if by magic, then he could set off for the next location. Otherwise he could be sat there for hours. ‘Talk about tedious and uncomfortable. My car wouldn’t be much good as a surveillance vehicle, it’s far too low, and not enough bells and whistles. I could hire something more upmarket, I suppose, but something decent would cost a flamin’ fortune.’ Ross slapped his palm on the table, rattling the latest pair of coffee mugs. ‘Oh bloody hell, I’ll just buy one. Then it’ll be the right spec.’ He thought for a second. ‘Aye, that’s what I’ll do. I can always sell it when this is all over.’ Oliver didn’t try to dissuade the younger man. It sounded like a sledgehammer to crack a nut but it was the ideal solution.
Oliver realised his coffee was empty, he walked over to the sink to make two more.
‘Wait a minute,’ said Ross. ‘It’s just dawned on me. There’s a whacking great hole in this check-the-wife-isn’t-Carla plan.’
‘And what’s that?’
‘Well, imagine I’m sitting outside a house, doing my Secret Squirrel thing, and a woman comes out or arrives home or whatever. How do I know she’s the wife? She could be the man’s sister, or friend, or cleaner, or … bit on the side. She could be anybody.’
‘It’s a fair point, Ross, and it’s come up before. We’ve all been in that position, and I’m afraid there’s no real answer. It can come down to gut feeling, instinct, call it what you like. If the couple come out arm in arm, or holding hands or something, you can be fairly certain they’re married. Is she wearing a wedding ring? What’s her body language like? Does she look shifty? Or does she turn up, put on an apron and start hoovering or dusting in the front room? His bit on the side won’t be putting out the rubbish, that’s for sure.’ Oliver gave an exaggerated shrug, where he held his shoulders up for half a second. ‘Truth is, I just don’t know. You’ll be the man sitting there so it’ll be down to your judgement.’ He laid two fresh coffees down. ‘Sorry, it’s not much of an answer but it’s the best I can do.’
‘This isn’t straightforward, is it? I mean, she could be away for a girlie holiday. I could sit there for days and not see any women at all.’
‘It’s possible. I went to a house in Leicestershire four times before the man’s wife put in an appearance. God knows where she was all the time but I just had to wait it out. So no, Ross. It’s not straightforward, it’s grunt work. But your only chance of finding Carla, and possibly your family’s jewellery, is checking out every woman in those thirty-seven houses.’
Ross had also been thinking about Carla’s supposed shift pattern. ‘Let’s assume she’s stuck with the same rota, to keep things straight with her other husband.’ Ross looked back in his diary to January, when he’d marked in Carla Offshore against a three-week period. ‘Counting forward in three-week blocks … she’ll be due back with her other “husband” in nine or ten days’ time. Well, that gives me time to sort myself out.’ Then he calculated that if push came to shove he would probably spend, on average, a full day spying at each location. Not including travelling time that meant a minimum of thirty-seven days. Five or six calendar weeks.
Ross rubbed his forehead. Tiredness was setting in. ‘Jeez! This is likely to take at least two of her rota changes, maybe three. I could still be traipsing around the country at Christmas at this rate. But thinking about it, if she has changed her rota she could be home at any time so let’s just go for it. I’ll start next week and take it from there.’
Oliver was delighted that Ross was so motivated. ‘That sounds great. Better to crack on and cover them all off quickly. The longer you leave it, the more chance there is of Carla disappearing. And this time for good.’
‘Just one final question, though. If I work through all thirty-seven and none of them is Carla, what happens then?’
‘I guess you have two choices. Either you call a halt, and I wouldn’t blame you if you did. Or you wait ’til we come up with the next list of highly probables, and you try again.’
Both men ruminated for a few seconds on what Oliver had just said. Neither was in any doubt that Ross would choose to call it a day.
After Oliver had gone back to his hotel, Ross was lying in bed with a fully paid-up membership to the wide-awake club. He was thinking about his relationship with Alex, what they had said and done since they’d met just four months ago. He was searching for any solid evidence that would prove, one way or the other, if she was this fabled secondary operative. Mentally, he added entries to the ‘For’, ‘Against’, and ‘Unproven’ columns in the case: The Truth versus Alexis Mair.
Definitely listed as a ‘For’, she was teaching him IT skills. And why would she do that if she were snooping into his affairs? When he refused to even consider using internet banking, she dropped the idea immediately and didn’t mention it again. She showed no interest whatsoever in his money or investments. The subject hadn’t cropped up. And she actually had a job, a real job. This one wasn’t a fabrication.
‘Against’? He had to question whether she did have family in Lairg. Was she even from there? She spoke with a Scots accent but it wasn’t particularly strong, not identifiable to a particular region. And she had shown no inclination to return to her Sutherland roots, not even for a visit. Yet she hadn’t ever spoken ill of her family. In fact, she didn’t speak about them at all. Now that he thought about it, that was a bit odd especially for a woman. Then there were her living arrangements. She’d said her own flat was rented out, but where was it? He remembered asking her about it. She told him it was near Haymarket but hadn’t been specific. But there were thousands of flats in that area. Why hadn’t she told him the address, even just mentioned the street name, rather than being so generic? He hadn’t asked again, figuring it was rented so, out of sight, out of mind. And whose flat was she looking after? Friends? Again, so non-specific. Had he seen even a postcard from them? Well, no. But perhaps world travellers don’t send postcards. Facebook or Instagram, probably. But again, hardly a mention. In four months?
Then those things that were neither for nor against. Plus nor minus. Not proven at worst, neutral at best. Like photos. She’s not that keen on being photographed. Well, guess what. Neither am I. They didn’t socialise all that much, but she didn’t seem all that bothered. Another entry in the ‘so what’ category. Then there was The Sex. Was she some erotic black widow spider, using her body to snare him? Or was she just a single woman with a healthy, outgoing attitude to sharing her body, albeit with a bit of a kink thrown in for added spice?
He thought back to a conversation they’d had at another music night in town. She was dressed in full punk regalia, and had bought Ross a vintage Clash t-shirt and black jeans so he didn’t stick out like a clown at a black-tie dinner. He asked her about this unusual punk-Goth affiliation, considering she was slightly too young to have been into those genres when they were in vogue, especially punk rock. She explained she’d had an older boyfriend at one time, who looked and acted like Sid Vicious with a migraine. She said she loved dressing up and that, ‘Sex with the gear on is always fantastic.’ Something he certainly could vouch for.
But if indeed she was mixed up in all this, the one point he couldn’t fathom was how she had managed to appear in his life to fix that fault on his PC. Leona’s text had explained how the fault could have been generated but even with his new-found interest in all things IT, quite how a hacker was able to target his PC from all the others in the office when they too were powered down, was still a stretch for him. Maybe I’ll ask someone.
