Desperate Measures: A Mystery (3 page)

“Jesus.”

“Quite.”

One of the few things she knew about Saturday was that his family, when he had one, were Jewish. It was where the nickname came from—“Excused Saturdays.” But he’d been alone so long that his language, including his profanities, was the language of the street. The community of the half homeless—those who didn’t sleep in shop doorways but in empty houses, derelict factories, and disused garages, and didn’t appear in most statistics because on the whole they didn’t annoy anyone—were his family now.

Hazel was about the closest he had to a friend outside that community. Now that she was safely back so Hazel didn’t have to tell Ash his dog was missing, she was glad Patience had gone over the wall. “I’m sorry about before. There
was
something you wanted, wasn’t there? Tell me.”

He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”

She breathed heavily at him. “Saturday, it’s quarter past six in the morning!
Anything
you do at quarter past six in the morning, unless it involves toothpaste or toast,
must
matter, because you wouldn’t be doing it otherwise, or at least not then. So tell me. It’s not like I’m in a hurry to be somewhere else.”

“I’ve got this laptop,” mumbled the boy.

Hazel stared at him. “A laptop? You haven’t got an address. You haven’t got a power supply. And I don’t mean to be rude, but you also haven’t got any money. What are you doing with a laptop?”

“It’s not
mine,
” he growled. Nothing she had said was untrue. That didn’t mean he felt good hearing it. “I found it.”

“Ah…” As a police officer, Hazel had some experience of people finding laptops. Mostly they found them on the backseats of locked cars.

Saturday read her thoughts through the back of her neck as she poured the coffee. Not much made him blush these days. Somehow that did. Knowing what she thought of him. Knowing she had every reason to think it.

“Where did you find it?”

“At the service station at Whorley Cross. In the washroom.”

He also didn’t have a car. “What were you doing at a service station?”

The flush in his cheek was not subsiding. “Having a wash, all right?” And looking to see if anyone had left anything valuable lying around. Both of them knew it.

“All right,” said Hazel. “Did you give it to the people in the shop?”

“That bunch of thieves?” Saturday glowered. “They’d sell it for beer money, and blame me if someone came looking for it.”

“And I’m guessing you didn’t take it in to Meadowvale, either.” No one in Saturday’s position ever entered a police station willingly.

“I thought you could take it in.”

“Why?”

“Because no one’ll accuse
you
of stealing it!”

“If you handed it in, no one would accuse
you
of stealing it.” But there was no point; she was never going to convince him. She sighed. “Okay, I’ll take it in.”

“Don’t mention me. Tell them you found it.”

“I’m not telling them I found it in the men’s washroom of the Whorley Cross service station!”

“I don’t care what you tell them! Just don’t mention me.”

She shook her head at him, exasperated—like his mother, like his teacher. She imagined both of them had tried to keep Saturday on the straight and narrow. Hazel had no illusions about the likelihood of succeeding where they had failed. But there was something about the boy, a certain grubby charm, an underlying decency, that made her want to try. “All right, I’ll think of something. Where is it?”

He carried his life in an ex-army rucksack, slung from one thin shoulder because he thought that was cooler than carrying it on his back. It was lying at his feet now. He reached into it, past the personal treasures he kept wrapped up in his other pair of socks, and produced the laptop.

It wasn’t big. But it was a good make with a good spec: someone had paid serious money for it. Someone else would have paid fairly good money for it, no questions asked. Hazel directed a quizzical eyebrow at him. “You didn’t think of selling it?”

The boy shook his head, turned his attention to the food. “It’s not mine,” he said virtuously, leaving Hazel fighting the urge to laugh.

“Okay, leave it with me. I’ll drop it at Meadowvale later today.”

“Don’t mention me.”

“And I won’t mention you.” She smiled. “Now—bacon and eggs?” It was her turn to blush. “Oh—sorry…”

Saturday returned her smile with one of his own, a sweeter, clearer-conscienced thing than he had any right to. “Don’t tell Granddad, but I don’t keep kosher anymore. You’d have to be awful fucking selective about which bins you raided.”

CHAPTER 4

H
AZEL WENT UPSTAIRS QUIETLY.
She met Patience coming through the open bedroom door and, a moment later, Ash himself. The sleep had done him good. He still had no more color than a ghost, but at least now he looked like a ghost that had worked out what had happened to him and what he had to do next.

“Has Saturday gone?”

Hazel nodded. “I gave him something to eat. Actually, I pretty well emptied your fridge. Sorry.”

“What did he want?”

“He nicked somebody’s laptop. Now he’s thought better of it and wants me to hand it in as lost property.”

The fact that Ash was in the boy’s debt didn’t blind him to his essential nature. “Thought better of it?”

Hazel gave a grim chuckle. “That puzzled me, too. He wouldn’t say any more, just left the thing with me and told me not to mention his name.”

“We don’t know his name.”

Hazel looked surprised. “Of course we do. It’s Saul—Saul Desmond.”

“You asked him?”

She stared at him. “You didn’t?”

And that was the difference between them. Hazel was a people person, Ash was not. She was genuinely interested in who they were and where they came from. Ash wasn’t, and never had been. He was interested in big pictures, not fine brushstrokes.

“Never mind Saturday and his thieving little ways,” said Hazel. “What are we going to do about your wife?”

They were words that must have been said a million times, and probably never in circumstances like these. But they were both too troubled to note the irony.

Ash led the way downstairs. Or rather, Patience did and Ash followed. In the hall he turned to face his friend. “Hazel, I appreciate that more than you can know. What are
we
going to do. But the reality is,
we
are not doing anything. I’ll tackle this on my own from now on.”

If he’d slapped her face, she could hardly have been more hurt. Surprise and resentment turned her voice into a plaint. “You don’t want my help?”

Ash swallowed, feeling like a worm. But it was important to hold firm. “Of course I want your help. But I won’t keep risking your life to have it. These are dangerous people. We know that—we’ve already been shot at, Cathy’s been held captive for four years, and God knows what’s happened to my sons. Well, I have nothing to lose. But you have, and I’m not going to see someone else I care about harmed because I made a bad decision. Go home now, Hazel. Stay away from me. When it’s safe, I’ll let you know how it all worked out.”

She couldn’t believe what he was saying. Far from waning, her sense of injustice and her anger grew—like sunflowers, like fireworks. She felt her fists knot and a quiver of pure rage travel up her spine. “Gabriel Ash, how dare you speak to me like that? After everything I’ve done for you! All the crap I’ve taken, for you! Because we were friends, and friends don’t walk out on one another when the going gets sticky. How dare you tell me to go home now?”

“I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“I’ve
been
hurt!” she yelled. She knew she was going red in the face and didn’t care, or not enough to stop. “I’ve been knocked out, half drowned, and had my backside peppered with buckshot! I’ve been stood down from a job I love, and I don’t know when or if I’ll be allowed back. My colleagues think I’m a loose cannon, my friends think I’m crazy. And why? Because you needed my help. You still need my help. Don’t you dare tell me I’m surplus to requirements!”

His big hands reached out for her. He had never held her before, or only to keep her face out of a ditch. He held her now, broad fingers grasping her upper arms. There was nothing remotely sensual about it, but she felt concern radiating from him. And a calmness she would never have believed, even as recently as a few hours ago. Hazel knew then that Ash had already decided what his next move would be, and that it would not involve her, and that nothing she could do or say would change his mind. She felt slighted and disappointed and relieved, and could not for the life of her have said which she felt most.

“I know what I owe you,” Ash said quietly. “Everything that I am today that I wasn’t three months ago. Specifically, someone who now has the strength to do what’s necessary without having his hand held. I am more grateful to you, Hazel Best, than I will ever be able to say: for your friendship, for your patience, for sticking by me when wiser counsels would have told you I was past redemption and you needed to consider your own position.

“Well, I still need your friendship, and I need your patience more now than before, but it’s time you listened to those wiser counsels and started looking after your own best interests. If you won’t, I’ll do it for you. What I need to do next I don’t need help with, and I don’t want to be worried that in trying to save Cathy I’m putting you in danger. I mean it. Go home. I’ll keep in touch. When there’s something to report, I’ll call you.”

Hazel looked into his face, into the shadows of his deep-set eyes, and saw that he meant almost every word of it. He would accept no more help from her. From this point, he would travel on alone. His tone was gentle, but the words were ruthlessly honest. The only lie he had told was when he promised to call her. She knew she wouldn’t hear from him again.

“Gabriel…” She couldn’t keep her voice from cracking.

“It’s all right.” He smiled solemnly, and put her away from him. “Go home now.”

“I can’t.”

“Yes, you can. You have to. If you come back, I won’t be here.”

*   *   *

What do you do when the sky falls? When everything changes? When the doctor says, “It isn’t good news.” When the lover says, “There’s someone else.” After your heart has clenched tight like a fist around broken glass, and the roller-coaster sensation in your head has passed, and the sun is still rising and setting to its appointed rhythm and the tide is still caressing a million nameless shores, and gradually it dawns on you that life will go on. That even
your
life will go on. Well, you pick yourself up, and you dust yourself down, and you check for missing limbs and the sort of bloodstains that might upset other people, and then you look for some point where you can reinsert yourself into your recent history. Where you can hope to pick up where you left off; and it won’t be the same, it’ll never be the same, but your screams will be silent ones and people who know you a little will think how brave you’re being. How sensible. And never guess that you feel like you’re bleeding all over.

Hazel stumbled blindly back to her car. It wasn’t tears tripping her; it was too soon for that. It was pure undiluted shock that had bleached and narrowed her perception like the tunnel vision of a near-death experience. Gabriel Ash was not the beginning and end of her existence. She had had a life before she knew him; she would find a way back to it now he was gone. There were plenty of things she could be doing—
should
be doing. Just, offhand, she couldn’t think what they were. She got into the car and sat still, panting softly like a hard-run deer.

The laptop was on the seat beside her. There was that. Maybe Ash didn’t want her help anymore, but Saturday did. She sniffed determinedly. When you can’t find a cure for cancer, sorting out the filing cabinet is a good plan B. Setting Saturday’s mind at rest could be plan B. She’d head home, if home she must go, via Meadowvale and tell some innocuous lie about how the device came into her keeping.

It was now some weeks since she’d passed the portals of Meadowvale Police Station. They were surprised to see her. Even Sergeant Murchison, who’d seen most things at least once, blinked when she stood before him, friendly smile pinned firmly in place, the laptop in her hands.

“What can I do for you … er, miss?”

The smile didn’t flicker, but Hazel heard the edge on her own voice. “First, Sarge, you can stop pretending you don’t recognize me. Then you can find out if Detective Inspector Gorman’s in his office.”

It might have been Sunday morning but he was, and from the speed at which he appeared down the stairs, he at least didn’t need reminding who she was. “Hazel! Come on in. Come upstairs, I’ll get some coffee sent in.” Instinctively, unaware that he was doing it, he ushered her up to the CID offices with an arm behind her shoulders, as if she might need defending. Of course, he was aware that she’d been stabbed in the back in this building before.

Hazel had expected to feel, and to make others feel, a little awkward. She was not prepared for how powerful the sensation of wrongness would be, or how urgent the instinct to cut and run. She made herself breathe steadily and keep walking. She’d had some difficult encounters in this building. But the facts had come out, and everyone who’d shunned her was now aware that she’d done nothing wrong. She had borne their hostility when they’d thought there was a reason for it, refusing to act as if she had something to be ashamed of. Now they knew the truth, it should have been easier. Somehow it wasn’t. She was glad the place was quiet.

Gorman took her to his office and shut the door. He ordered coffee over the intercom. “How are you?” He peered into her face with every sign of concern.

“Fine,” she lied breezily. “Just waiting for the word to get back to work.”

Dave Gorman nodded. He was a squarely built man with a broad, low forehead and a much-broken nose. If you’d cut his leg off, it would have had the words
RUGBY UNION
running through it like a stick of rock. He was also an intelligent man, and a good one. “Give it time. What you went through, you don’t get over in a week or two.” He gave a sudden smile. “They’re paying you to sit in the sun and do bugger all. Enjoy it while you can.”