Someone Who Isn't Me, Danuta Kot [good books to read for adults TXT] 📗

‘Hang on, I’m not getting this. Start at the beginning. You came back to your place – what time? Where had you been?’

‘The pub. I’ve been working. I took some more photos. In the cellar. I think they know. I sent them to you.’

He checked. ‘Got them.’ A week ago, this would have been a big deal, but he already knew what the bags contained, and by themselves, they didn’t count for much.

‘Listen, you’ve got to do something. I think they’ve got my mate’s kid, Lewis. Your lot talked to him a couple of days ago. And Kay, my mum, my foster-mum…’

He listened as it all came out. He didn’t have time for this. It was irrelevant now. Dom Maskall had come through. As he had predicted, Docklands Holdings were, on paper, supplying a range of services to Tania’s House, things that would be hard to audit. According to these figures, Lavery made the donation, and got a bit less than half of his money back – but this time, it was clean money. Curwen was pretty sure he hadn’t uncovered the half of Lavery’s business interests. This looked like the tip of a massive money-laundering iceberg – and he’d found it.

The financial crime team had taken what he told them very seriously, and there was talk about warrants. This time, Lavery wasn’t getting away with it.

And OK, Becca’s photos showed that there was money – a lot, this time – hidden in the pub. Let Lavery get away with the last night’s takings excuse this time.

‘Leave it with me,’ he said. ‘I’ll send someone round.’ Becca the Barmaid had let a kid from one of the drugs gangs get hold of her keys, so she shouldn’t be too surprised to come back and find her place trashed. He’d pass it on to the duty team – they’d take a report coming from him seriously, even on a busy night. The best thing she could do was wait for the patrol car then go and spend the night with a friend.

He was about to pick up the phone on his desk to make the call, when it rang. It was his contact from the financial crimes section. ‘Someone’s tipped them off,’ the man said. ‘We’re going in tonight. You coming?’

Curwen had been waiting for this moment for weeks. Of course he was.

Becca stood in the bedsit, shivering in the cold from the broken window. ‘I’ll send someone round,’ Curwen had said. But he hadn’t seemed bothered.

They could be back any minute. How would he know she was safe?

He’d got what he wanted and now he didn’t care.

Well, she could deal with that. Being on her own was what she did. But Kay – she had to get help for Kay and she no longer had any faith in Curwen. She dug in her pocket and pulled out the card the other detective had given her.

Dinah Mason.

One pig-creep, another pig-creep. Did it matter? But Dinah Mason had told her the truth about Andy.

She’d been stupid to think she could trust Curwen, but maybe, just maybe, Dinah Mason was OK. She had to take the risk. For Kay.

This time she was able to be clear. She cut through Dinah’s confused questions, and told her what had happened. ‘They’ve trashed everything. And they’ve got my mum’s address. She lives on Sunk Island and she’s not answering her phone.’

Dinah got it at once. ‘Right. Listen. I’m sending a patrol car to you. Get out of the flat. Keep out of sight until the car gets there. It’ll be marked. And I’ll get someone down to your mum’s at Sunk island, and I’ll get them looking for the kid. Don’t worry. I’m on it.’

Becca opened her sent texts and forwarded the photos to Dinah, but there was no time to add an explanation. She had to go.

Chapter 36

Sunk Island

Kay pulled on her coat and double-checked her bag for keys, thermos, energy bars and her teenage survival kit. The fragrance of the pizza still hung in the air, but now it was an unappetising, cooling lump on the table.

She laced up her boots. Milo, who usually leaped to his feet when he saw her getting ready to go out, was snoozing in his basket. He opened one eye, but didn’t move. Kay had wondered about taking him with her – but the back streets of Hull at night? That wasn’t a safe environment for a dog. He’d be fine here. She went to the door.

The rain was coming down in vertical rods. Kay hesitated, pulling her hood up over her head. She heard the sound of a bike revving up.

It was nearby, but there was nothing in the road.

Just darkness.

She locked the door behind her and stepped out into the night.

Her torch threw pale circles on the gravel of the path as she headed round the side of the house to where she’d left her car. The wind caught her and she stopped, trying to keep herself upright as it screamed round her, whipping the hood off her head and lifting the skirts of the raincoat. She shivered as the rain splashed against her legs.

Something blew across the path, something familiar.

She grabbed at it, feeling the rain soak through her gloves.

A yellow compost bag.

The light from her torch barely seemed to touch the darkness as she turned it towards the door of the fuel store.

There was nothing there, or nothing she could see; just the door, firmly closed in the wall, the hasp padlocked shut.

But she was suddenly on major alert, everything in her urging her to move fast, to get away and out of the enclosing darkness and onto the road. Her fingers fumbled as she unlocked the car and slipped behind the wheel, aware of the water dripping from her boots and from her coat.

She pulled the door closed and turned on the engine, using the car lights to illuminate the garden.

Just dripping shrubs, the door