The Dead Lie Down (Adam Lennox Thrillers: Book One) (5 page)

Life, frozen before him, the
past precious and the future empty. Missed 'Goodbyes', lost 'I love you's. The
grief closed around him like fog, swirling, cold, blocking out everything beyond
it. He cried out her name again and again, an appeal to the gods to rewind
time.

But instead the hours passed,
the house grew cold and the grief remained.

His blood still ran cold when he recalled the policeman on the doorstep, with
the classic harbinger of doom. "Are you Adam Lennox? Husband of Fran Lennox?" He
still remembered the sudden cold clamminess, the racing heartbeat and the hollow
feeling in the pit of his stomach, and knowing that his life would never be the
same again.

Two years of intense happiness and contentment they'd had, he and Fran, until
one night a hit and run driver robbed Adam's wife of her life and extinguished
his.

There had been something mysterious and alive about Fran that attracted him
initially and which made her fun to be around. Often unpredictable but never
boring, her thirst for life had been as infectious as her laugh.

For
months survival was all he could manage, as the grief took hold and worked its
course. As he remembered it, Tom Hank's line from 'Sleepless in Seattle' came
back to him, 'getting out of bed each day and remembering to breathe in and
out'. After Fran's death their friends had rallied around but struggled to know
what to do with Adam. He withdrew, struggling internally to make sense of things
whilst life around him fell apart. Eventually he started to look again to the
future but saw only a bleak empty landscape.

He remembered fighting to adjust to his new role of widower instead of husband,
single instead of couple. Bel in particular struggled with their new but
uncomfortable relationship. Once good friends, Bel had spent considerable time
with Adam and Fran, but after her death they drifted apart. What had been their
common bond, Adam's wife and Bel's best friend, now pushed them apart as the
pain of common loss became too acute. Bel was asked to take Fran's old job at
Bartletts. They talked about it, she took it and thereafter Adam's business
contacts with John Bartlett became a two edged sword. The memories of Fran,
seeing Bel and remembering past happiness often became too much. He dreaded
them.

He
had dismantled the house that he and Fran had spent two years adding their
personalities to, sold it and renovated the two floors above the offices. The
business became his life and he threw himself into it with an aggression that
some found alarming but did somehow help to deal with his anger at what life,
fate or God, choose what you will, had thrown at him.

He was brewing a headache, he recognised the signs. For some reason seeing Bel
had made him yearn for the country, and he stood up. "Anyway, I'm going up to
Dunwich to blow away the cobwebs. I'll be back tomorrow, my mobile's on."

Clare raised her eyebrows, "Much good it does you in Dunwich, it's off the
mobile planet."

He
waved a hand vaguely in a gesture of dismissal as he made his way out to their
unprepossessing lockup garage, which had once housed the laundrette van but was
now home to Adam's Lotus
.
It
had been a birthday present and you can't look gift horses in the mouth now can
you. He took off down the lane, making all the local dogs bark furiously, and
minutes later he was on the A12 out of London on his way to the wilds of
Suffolk.

And now the flat in London was his home. He had spared no expense on it.
Ironically he had subconsciously styled it the way Fran would have liked, but it
still never seemed like home. He bought a row of cottages in Suffolk. Dunwich
was an unspoilt place in an unsullied part of East Anglia where peace and quiet
was still a way of life.

He
kept one cottage for himself and rented out the rest. Gerry teased him that he
just wanted to be able to choose his neighbours and he was probably right. Most
of the cottages were on long term lets, only two being holiday
cottages.

He had never been in this part of the country with Fran. It sounds hard but this
is where he could forget Fran and the past. This was where Adam felt he could
chill.

Relaxing was something he always found difficult to do. He had an extreme
aversion to unfinished business and it tended to keep him awake at nights. When
he had been at school he had to do his homework as soon as it was given out, not
for him the night before it was due to be handed in. He didn't see it
particularly as a weakness, though some might disagree with a pitying shake of
the head, but it did explain in his eyes why he still struggled to move on from
Fran's death, and from Iraq. That Fran's killer had not been found still caused
him profound pain.

Adam looked up and noticed the signs for Chelmsford. Don't you hate that when
you drive somewhere and don't have any recollection of how you got there. Scares
the shit out of me.

As he drove steadily north-east through the rolling hills of north Essex the
weather deteriorated as the light faded. By the time he passed Ipswich the
windscreen wipers were on and the spray was cutting visibility dramatically. The
headlights attempted to pierce the gloom but increasingly the rain threw the
light back in his eyes.

As he finally drove through Yoxford and down to Westleton, the heathland in the
dark resembled a vast emptiness where you could hardly see the edge of the road
never mind the hedgerows, and it was because of that he almost missed it.

In the blackness a dark form rose up out of the roadside ditch, large and
ominous. Instinctively he swerved to avoid it. This was deer country and hitting
one of these beasts could do serious damage. In this instance, accelerating to
pass it, something caught his eye and he braked to a halt.

The form was human.

Chapter 6

The old abandoned warehouse was one of many still left in London's East End but
they were fast disappearing at the hands of the developers. The vast hall was
still strewn with the evidence of its past as a print-works. Leaflets and
flyers, pamphlets and posters, advertising everything from West End shows to
shaving cream. The machinery had all gone though, sold for scrap, leaving a
hollow shell bereft of life, waiting for the bulldozers like a skeleton waiting
for the archaeologists. The walls still displayed scrawled messages from the
past industry, mixed with more up-to-date graffiti. Outside, the rain pounded on
the windows and where the glass was missing small puddles formed on the floor.
Outside, the darkness created an enveloping void whilst inside an electric lamp
gave a dim light, indicating that the battery was badly in need of charging.

Reilly looked down with regret at the body lying at his feet and carefully
cleaned the knife with the rag that he carried for the purpose. The regret was
not in the killing itself, for Reilly had killed dozens in his time, the regret
was for a killing wasted.

As
a young man at the height of the Irish troubles he had grown accustomed to the
maiming and killing as a matter of routine, but whilst some had enjoyed the
violence Reilly enjoyed inflicting fear. From the early childhood days of
tormenting the neighbourhood strays to more recent times of interrogating
suspected Loyalist or army informers, he had displayed an increasing delight in
inflicting pain and terror for its own sake that had even sickened many of those
who employed him.

This one had been a waste. Reilly hadn't managed to make him give the right
answers before he died and that annoyed Reilly intensely because he considered
himself an expert at getting answers.

If this man didn't know the answers then Reilly could live with that, but what
he feared most was the possibility that his victim had more determination to
take his secret to the grave, than Reilly had the ability to make him part with
it. He considered the possibilities and decided on balance that the knowledge
hadn't been there to give. Either way the death had been a necessary one, an
inescapable fact in his eyes.

The knife was almost clean to his satisfaction and he turned to start
obliterating any evidence of his presence when the mobile rang in the depths of
his pocket. He grimaced. This was not a conversation that he was ready to have
yet. He flipped the phone open nevertheless.

"Yes".
Rule one. Never, never answer the phone with your name.

"Reilly." It was a statement, not a question and the voice had the same Irish
intonation.

"Mr O."

"What progress have we made this evening?"

"Well, I'm thinking that it's all over. He's dead and that's a fact. And I'm
convinced that there was nothing else he knew."

"What do you mean?"

"Even at his weakest, when I mentioned the papers, I didn't get a whisker of
recognition out of him. He didn't know where they are, in fact I'd wager he
didn't even know what I was talking about"

"You agree with Greg then?"

"I do."

"And we're no further forward?"

Reilly paused, taking care over his words.

"There can't be that many people the papers could have been left with. He didn't
trust many. We know Greg hasn't got them, and this one didn't have them. They
may yet have been destroyed."

There was a pause at the far end of the phone.

"I can't take that chance until I'm sure. I've got far too much at stake. You
know that."

"I do. I do."

"The girl, Trent. Was she around at the time?"

"Greg says yes, but he reckons she wasn't close enough to be involved"

"Can we take the risk that Greg might be wrong?"

"I'll inquire."

"Do whatever you have to, we're running out of time. You'll get rid of the body
as we planned?"

"Oh yes. I will that," replied Reilly with an uncharacteristic grin.

"Good. The next few days have got to give us answers. I need you to succeed,
Reilly. I can't afford to let you fail. You know that don't you?"

Reilly frowned at the veiled threat and considered a suitable reply but the line
was already dead. He wrapped the body in the sheeting he had brought in
anticipation, lifted his burden with some considerable effort, and opening the
door, went out into the night.

Chapter 7

With the rain still drumming on the roof, Adam reversed up. In the light of the
car's reversing lamps he could now distinguish what he guessed was a woman in a
hooded jacket dragging a small suitcase.

Opening the passenger door he called out over the noise of the rain.

"You seem to be in difficulties. Can I be of any help?"

A
voice, from somewhere inside the jacket, shouted to him with surprising
vivacity, above the noise of the rain.

"I'll say you can. I'm totally soaked and I've been in this goddam ditch at
least twice. I'm completely lost and I need to get to somewhere called
Dunwich."

The North American accent came as a surprise but the voice was young and female
as he had guessed. "Get in," he insisted. "I'm going there myself."

"Are you sure your automobile can take the mess I'm in?"
"Sure. Don't worry."
Now would he have said that if the figure had been a tramp? He dismissed the
thought more easily than he anticipated. "Everything can be cleaned."

The
figure dropped gratefully into the passenger seat whilst Adam dropped the
suitcase onto the floor behind them, and with the door closed conversation
became markedly easier. Adam turned the heater and the air conditioning up to
cope with the increased damp and perused his new passenger. It was difficult to
determine much under the layer of mud that seem to cover most of her clothes and
face but some Chinese background was evident, although probably several
generations ago going by the accent. Adam realised with a start that she was
also now scanning him.

He turned off the interior light and made to move off.

"You smell terrible." Great opening line with the ladies had Adam.

"I know, I guess there are loads of pigs around here, yeah?"

"Yeah. Introductions I think. I'm Adam Lennox. I think in the circumstances I'll
shake your hand later if you don't mind."

"Not a problem. Anna Low. Originally New York state but lately of London
courtesy of First National Bank."

"Welcome to Dunwich, Anna Low. How come you're in the middle of Suffolk falling
into ditches at this time of the night?"

"Your
great transport system. I've rented a cottage in Dunwich and came up from
London by train to Darsham. Someone told me there'd be a cab but it was so late
by the time I got there that they locked up the station behind me and there
wasn't so much as a push-bike in sight. They said it was walk-able to Dunwich so
I started out on foot. Big mistake. Realised it was a bad idea the first time I
fell in a ditch."

She paused and smiled at the thought and her face seemed to suddenly light up.
Adam let in the clutch and pulled away.

"Where is this cottage?"

"I have no idea. It's called something weird like 'End of the Queue'.

"'Last in Line'. I know it." He paused and then continued, "In fact I own
it."

Her eyes reflected the surprise that echoed in her voice.

"You own it? Well, how about that."

"I live some of the time in the cottage next door to it."

"You own both?"

"Well in fact I own the whole row, but I have an agent looks after them for me."
He paused to negotiate a bend in the road. "I think I'd better let you clean up
at my place. There won't be enough hot water ready in yours."

"Well I'm keen to get this mess off of me, so whatever you think is best, I'm
game."

In
very short time they came to a stop outside the cottages although they could as
easily have been a block of flats for all you could see of them in the dark and
pouring rain, but Adam appeared
to know what he was
doing. They ran quickly across the small garden and passed the hanging ivy into
Adam's cottage.