Prime Deception (18 page)

‘That sounds like a great idea,’ he enthused. ‘But … will you be alright?’ he added as an afterthought.

‘Yes,’ Laurie replied definitely. ‘I mean, I think so,’ she continued, the certainty slipping away from her voice. ‘It is just a tree now. There is nothing there, nothing which marks it as the site of the crash. It you didn’t know, it would just be like any other place.’

‘But you do know.’

‘Yeah.’

They were both silent as the mood between them grew heavy with sadness and regret. Charles noted the way Laurie hugged at her tiny frame, her beautiful face now featured the emergence of wrinkles, a telling sign of the hours she had spent frowning in pain and frustration at the loss of her sister. Again, Charles recalled Lorna’s bright disposition, and hated how her death had robbed Laurie of her own light. If nothing else, he wanted to restore that in the young woman. He felt as though it were his duty, his penance to pay for letting Lorna slip through his grasp.

‘Have you been there before?’

‘To the crash site? No. No-one has that I know of. My dad changed his whole route to work in order to avoid it, so that his journey now takes an hour instead of twenty minutes.’

‘So why do you want to go there now?’ Charles delivered his questions softly, seeking the answers only to belay his own fears for Laurie’s current state of mind.

‘I need to.’

‘Okay.’

‘I need to see it. To be there, to see the place which separated us forever.’

‘Would you like me to go with you?’

Charles’ offer caught Laurie by surprise. Up until that point, his input had been confined to the shadows. They met under false pretences; no-one would know that they were investigating Lorna’s death. If they were seen together beyond the office, people would talk and come to their own conclusions. It was a great risk that Charles was willing to take, and despite Laurie’s new-found reservations about him, she couldn’t help but feel touched by his gesture.

‘No, thank you. I think it is best that I go alone.’

‘Are you sure? I imagine that going there will be quite distressing. Are you sure that you wouldn’t want someone there with you?’

‘I’ll be fine,’ Laurie lied. She was prepared for how distressing visiting the crash site would be, but she was resolute in her decision to return home, to feel safe. Whatever feelings being there might stir in her, it would be preferable to the nights spent alone and fearful in a strange city.

‘When will you come back?’

‘I will be back in the office by next Monday.’

‘A week!’ Charles cried suddenly. It was only seven days but it felt like an eternity, and there was no guarantee that Laurie would even return.

‘A week is fine,’ he said, calmer this time, having composed himself. ‘We will note it as compassionate leave.’

‘Thank you. I really appreciate you letting me go.’

‘I’m happy to help. I bet your family will be pleased to see you.’

‘You’d be surprised,’ Laurie scoffed. ‘I think they like me being away, out of sight and out of mind. When I’m around, they have to deal with losing Lorna all over again.’

‘Even so, I bet they have missed you.’

‘No, they miss Lorna,’ Laurie corrected him. ‘I’m just a painful reminder of the daughter they have lost.’

‘But they still have you which must offer them some consolation.’

‘You’d think that, wouldn’t you?’ Laurie sighed.

Smiling sadly at Charles, Laurie raised herself from the chair and left his office. It was only once she had delivered the news of her leave to a visibly annoyed Faye, packed her bags, left her modest apartment and was seated on the train, that Laurie let herself relax. As the carriage spirited along the train tracks, Laurie felt her bones ease in the knowledge that she was going somewhere safe, somewhere familiar. Home was home. Even as things changed, and people left, her home was the one constant which remained the same. Her parents may look at her differently, and her bedroom might seem quieter without Lorna causing a musical riot next door, blasting out the latest CD from the fad band of the month, but it was still home, and Laurie longed to be there, if only for a brief period of time.

The fact that Charles never attended Lorna’s funeral still haunted him. He often wondered if he had taken it upon himself to go and bid her farewell, would she not now torment him in his dreams. He knew that he should have been there, but at the time it felt impossible. And now Laurie was returning to Kent in an attempt to deal with her own grief further and he had just let her go.

In the solitude of his office, Charles sighed and shook his head wearily. He felt as though he were destined to only ever disappoint the Thomas twins. He had let Lorna down, he accepted that, and his actions may even have pushed her to end her own life. Charles already had blood on his hands, he wasn’t about to let it dry and carry it around with him forever. He wanted to wash them clean and to make amends and Laurie offered the opportunity for him to do that.

But Laurie had expressly stated that she wanted to return home alone. Charles had offered to join her, to stand beside her and act as the sponge which absorbed her pain, but she didn’t want him there. If anything, Charles felt that she was grateful to be getting away from him, but then he chastised himself for being so insecure.

As the day dragged on, Charles floated between various meetings, making the right noises but with his mind constantly preoccupied with the now absent Laurie. What he told himself was concern was actually him pining for her. A part of him feared that she may never return and that he could have lost his last connection to Lorna forever.

It was with clouded judgment that Charles called Henry directly and informed his driver that the following morning they would not be travelling into London as usual, but instead their new destination would be Kent. The call had taken the loyal driver by surprise, who was accustomed to dealing with Faye regarding such arrangements, never the Deputy Prime Minister directly. But Charles wanted Faye out of the equation. She would instantly know why he was going to Kent and doubtless be against it. Charles did not have the time to fight his assistant and her judgement; he just felt that it was imperative that he support Laurie. Even if she didn’t say it, he knew that she needed him. She had to, because he needed her.

That night, before Charles retired to bed, he went out into his back garden to make one final phone call, away from the office and on his personal mobile phone to avoid detection. He dialled the number cautiously, his nerves making his fingers tremble ever so slightly. Elaine was already in bed and lost to sleep so there was no risk of her overhearing him. Charles had only ever dialled the number once before, and he was uncertain of what drove him to again. Perhaps he wanted some pretence for driving out to see Laurie, to disguise his true intentions of simply longing to see her.

His mobile rang twice – slow, distant rings signifying that the recipient was in a foreign country – before a deep male voice answered.

‘Is this line secure?’ No greeting, just a simple question delivered abruptly.

‘Yes.’

‘The stars look beautiful tonight.’ To the untrained ear, this would be a strange observation to make, but Charles recognised the sign in code, and knew his next line.

‘Any brighter and they would be diamonds.’

‘Right, okay, what do you want?’ The tension in the voice on the other end of the line eased a little.

‘It’s Sovereign. How was that cake I sent you?’ They always spoke in code, for there was never a guarantee that any line was completely secure. The only way to ensure complete secrecy was to meet in person but, currently, that was not feasible.

‘Tasted a little off, perhaps there was something wrong with the recipe. Let me finish it and I’ll get back to you.’ And then the line disconnected.

Charles stood on his neatly manicured lawn, hidden amongst the shadows of the night and watched the light source fade from the handset in his hand now that the call had ended. He hadn’t learned much, but there was just about enough to warrant an excuse to go and see Laurie. Charles continued to study his mobile phone, locked in his own thoughts. It had been reckless of him to call his contact like that, and it was something he had not done for a very long time. It was frighteningly obvious to him that when it came to Laurie, he was willing to go to some extreme lengths.

‘Good morning, sir,’ Henry smiled cheerily as Charles got into the back of the Bentley.

‘Morning,’ Charles replied pleasantly, a smile on his face but his eyes distant and far away.

‘Do you have the postcode, sir?’ It was all very irregular to be departing from the usual agenda for the day at such short notice, but Henry knew better than to question authority and so he just kept his head down and followed orders.

‘Yes,’ Charles read an assortment of letters and numbers from his mobile phone which Henry punched in to the satellite navigation system which resided on his dashboard.

As the Bentley veered from its normal route into the city, and instead headed out towards the countryside, Charles sat and pondered how he would feel on visiting the crash site. He had been so preoccupied with fretting about Laurie that he had forgotten to consider how this excursion may impact on him.

‘Where I live is so lovely,’ he recalled Lorna telling him one evening as they lay together on the bed having previously made love. Her face had lit up at the mention of her home.

‘My house has a huge garden, with a little pond at the back. And there are fields all around; I used to have a horse when I was a little girl, called Sandy.’

‘London must seem very different,’ Charles had noted.

‘Yes, but good different. I love the pace of life here, and there is just so much to see and do. I hear there is a place in town now where you can get a boob job done in your lunch hour!’ Lorna had giggled at this, her face scrunching up. Charles had found the gesture so adorable that he had leaned over and kissed her, and they lost themselves in lust all over again.

Charles cherished the moments where Lorna revealed things about herself to him. He stored up everything she said in an attempt to gain a better understanding of her. Sadly, his picture of her was incomplete. There were so many crucial things he did not know; things which would have been integral to her being, and now there was no way of knowing. Even though Laurie was Lorna’s carbon copy, they were the antithesis of one another.

Green fields opened up around the Bentley and Charles could envisage a young Lorna frolicking through the grass with her beloved horse Sandy. But as he smiled as this notion, Charles found himself wondering what Laurie would have been doing. How had she spent her days as a girl? He doubted that she also had a horse; he imagined her with a treehouse where she would hide herself away and spend hour after hour devouring books.

The electronic cry of his mobile phone signalling a new text message disturbed Charles from his thoughts. Irritated, he glanced at his handset but his annoyance immediately subsided when he saw the name of the sender; Laurie.

I can’t do this.

Alone amongst a family who regarded her as a ghost, Laurie was feeling weaker than ever. Even though it was against her instincts to contact the Deputy Prime Minister, she felt that she had no-one else to turn to. Charles instantly felt his heart soar at the fact that she needed him, and wrote back with unnatural rapidity:

I am already on my way x.

The site of the crash was located on a secluded country lane. Huge, great oak trees bordered the winding road, but one stood out from the others because at the base of its trunk lay four bouquets of flowers which had just started to wilt, and beside the tree stood a forlorn-looking Laurie.

Laurie glanced up as the Bentley eased to a halt a few feet away from her. Her eyes were red and sore from the tears she had been weeping. As much as didn’t want to admit it, seeing Charles calmed her and even helped ease some of her pain. He understood her in a way that no-one else seemed to; he missed Lorna and continued to mourn her, but he didn’t associate her death with Laurie. He treated Laurie as the individual young woman that she was.

‘I knew you shouldn’t have come here alone,’ Charles rushed over and instinctively embraced Laurie, not caring what Henry or any other potential onlookers would think. Laurie buried herself against his chest, fresh tears soaking his coat.

‘It’s too hard,’ Laurie cried, her body trembling as she sobbed.

‘Shhh, it’s okay, I’m here now,’ Charles gently whispered into her ear as he stroked her golden hair.

As Laurie cried he looked at the great tree behind her, unscathed from the collision all those months ago. The only indication that a life had been taken on that spot was the meagre offering of flora nestled amongst the protruding roots. Charles envisioned how, when the tyre marks were still fresh on the road, that there would have been an abundance of flowers left there to commemorate Lorna. But time had moved on and now only the most dedicated made the journey there to place some carnations and pay their respects. It was sobering how time could erase someone so effortlessly.

‘I thought it would be okay,’ Laurie whispered, her voice hoarse. ‘That I could come here and just look, but I keep imagining her …’ her voice broke off as she struggled to complete the sentence.

‘Yeah, I know, it’s so hard.’

But for Charles, it wasn’t as hard as he had feared. Rather than being consumed by grief, his mind was instead preoccupied with concern for Laurie. Perhaps she was merely distracting him from his own despair, but she was a welcome distraction.

They stood there, Laurie still locked safely within Charles’ arms, as the Deputy Prime Minister scanned the area around them. It was an average country lane, pretty and narrow, with ancient strong oak trees standing guard over the road, and beyond them fields of luscious green vegetation. It was a beautiful piece of countryside, but what struck Charles was how it was hardly a spot which would attract those wishing to commit suicide.

Most places which tragically became associated with those wishing to end their life were bridges or railway lines, so that there was a guarantee that you would not live past your suicide attempt. Here, the road winded in such a way that it would be extremely difficult to generate enough speed to slam in to a tree at a high enough impact for it to be fatal. There were so many variables for why it would not work.