Safe House

  Safe House

  Chris Ewan

  This book would not exist without the support and advice of my brilliant agent, Vivien Green, my wonderful editors, Katherine Armstrong and Hope Dellon, and my beautiful wife, Jo, who lured me to the Isle of Man with wild claims about sunshine, and who I love all the more through the wind, rain, fog and snow.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  A Note on the Isle of Man

  I don’t remember much . . .

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Part Two

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Part Three

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-six

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-one

  Chapter Fifty-two

  Chapter Fifty-three

  Chapter Fifty-four

  Chapter Fifty-five

  Chapter Fifty-six

  Chapter Fifty-seven

  Chapter Fifty-eight

  Five weeks later

  Amsterdam

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Copyright

  A Note on the Isle of Man

  The Isle of Man is located in the middle of the Irish Sea, roughly halfway between the Lake District and Northern Ireland. The island is self-governing, with its own parliament and laws, and an independent police force.

  For a fortnight every late May into early June, the Isle of Man stages the TT (Tourist Trophy) motorbike time-trial races. Run on public roads, the 37.7 mile track makes for one of the most spectacular and perilous motorcycle races in the world, with leading competitors recording top speeds of over 200 mph and average lap speeds in excess of 131 mph.

  The island is thirty-two miles long and fourteen miles wide and has a population of eighty thousand people, none of whom form the basis for any of the characters in this book.

  I don’t remember much . . .

  I don’t remember much about the accident. It happened too fast. Motorbike crashes usually do. Most of what I can remember is noise. A loud pop followed by a judder. The thud of the front forks collapsing. The squeal of the engine as the rear wheel kicked up and pitched me over the bars.

  And I remember Lena’s scream. The way her hands pinched my waist before slipping away. The crunch of our helmets colliding.

  Or at least, I think I do . . .

  Part One

  Chapter One

  The doctor was young. Too young. She looked pale and frazzled, as if really she was the one in need of hospital rest. The skin beneath her eyes was tinged purple and she gripped my chart with unsteady hands, studying it like the script of a play she was aiming to memorise. Her lips moved as she traced the words.

  ‘You were in a motorbike accident.’ She glanced up, her spectacle lenses magnifying her bloodshot eyes.

  I pulled the oxygen mask away from my mouth. ‘No kidding.’

  ‘You suffered a loss of consciousness.’

  I swallowed. My throat felt raw and bloated, as if something had been shoved down there while I was asleep – a breathing tube, maybe. ‘How long?’

  She glanced at a clock on the wall in the corner of the room. Made a note on my file. ‘You were out for almost seven hours. Before you came round the first time.’

  Seven hours. It must have been some shunt. Not my only one, by any means, but probably my biggest.

  ‘The first time?’ I asked.

  ‘You don’t remember?’

  I eased my head from side to side on my pillow.

  ‘That’s OK. It’s perfectly normal. I’m Dr Gaskell. We met ninety minutes ago. You were only awake for a brief spell.’

  I racked my brain but nothing came up. My vision was blurred, as if someone had smeared Vaseline on my eyeballs. I blinked and the room tilted to the right.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m not offended. Short-term memory loss is pretty common with a traumatic head injury.’

  ‘Traumatic?’

  ‘Try to relax, Mr Hale. Sleep if you need to. There’s plenty of time for you to discuss all this with the specialist in the morning.’

  ‘Tell me now. Please.’

  She frowned. Pushed her spectacles up on her nose.

  ‘What’s the problem?’ I asked. ‘Afraid I’ll forget?’

  She chewed her lip, like she was running through a debate with herself, but then she moved around the bed and freed the oxygen mask from my hands, settling it against my face. She plucked a penlight from the pocket of her white lab coat and shone it into my eyes.

  ‘Is that uncomfortable?’ she asked.

  ‘Hurts.’ My voice was muffled. My breath condensed on the inside of the mask.

  ‘Your speech is a little slurred. Any dizziness? Blurred vision? Nausea?’

  ‘All of those.’

  She nodded. ‘You’ll be in hospital for a few days, at least. You’ve already had a CT scan but you may need an MRI, too. We have to watch for any secondary swelling. But that’s OK. It gives us time to treat your other injuries.’

  The dimly lit room was growing dark from behind her, shadows bleeding in from the corners of my vision. I tried pushing myself up in bed, but someone stabbed me in the back and I groaned and crumpled.

  ‘Careful. Your left scapula is fractured.’ She placed her hands on my arm to stop me moving again. ‘Not a serious break. Barely a hairline crack. But it’ll take some healing. A nurse will be in soon to put your arm in a sling.’

  I rolled my head to the side and saw the bandages that had been wrapped around my chest, under my armpit and over my collarbone. A fractured shoulder. It could be weeks until I had full movement. Months before I’d be able to lift heavy objects again. I was afraid of what that might mean for my business. There aren’t many one-armed heating engineers around. The impact on my road-racing season was likely to be much worse. Chances were, it was over before it had begun.

  ‘You’ve also bruised a couple of ribs,’ she said. ‘But other than that, you’ve been fortunate. You have some minor abrasions on your left side and bruising on your leg, but your pelvis, knees, ankles and feet are intact. And no broken fingers, miraculously. I’ve seen worse.’

  I wasn’t sure I believed her. My face must have given me away.

  ‘I might be a junior doctor, Mr
Hale, but this is the Isle of Man. I’ve had to treat more than my fair share of motorbike accidents, trust me.’

  There was disapproval in her tone, but she was too young for it to carry much impact. Especially with a guy who was just barely awake.

  ‘And Lena?’ I asked. ‘How’s she doing?’

  Dr Gaskell’s eyebrows forked above her spectacles. She squinted, as if she didn’t trust her hearing.

  And I thought I was the one with the brain injury.

  ‘Lena,’ I said. ‘My friend. She was in the first ambulance.’

  That was something I could definitely remember. Hard not to, really. Splayed on the side of the road, my head propped against the grass bank running alongside the cold, damp tarmac, my left arm bent awkwardly beneath me. I didn’t know how long I’d been out, but I’d come round to a sideways view of the pitted blacktop and the wet, gloomy clouds pressing down from above.

  A paramedic in a green jumpsuit appeared. He crouched and flipped up what remained of my helmet visor.

  I struggled to move, but my arms and legs were numb. I told myself not to panic. That it was only the shock.

  ‘You’ll be OK,’ the paramedic said. He had close-cropped hair and a fuzzy soul-patch beneath his lower lip. The facial hair didn’t suit him but I wasn’t about to say as much. ‘There’s another ambulance on the way. But the girl is hurt worse. We have to take her first. Understand?’

  I wheezed back at him. Trying to say that was fine. That it was the right thing to do. But I couldn’t speak.

  The paramedic squeezed my gloved hand and something snagged against the skin of my wrist. He paced away. I heard a door close. Then I glimpsed a blur of white as the ambulance sped off up the road, abandoning me to a sickly silence that faded to grey, then black.

  Next thing I knew, I was talking with Dr Gaskell. She looked troubled now. She bit down on her lip. Glanced over her shoulder towards the door.

  ‘Let me find out for you,’ she said.

  I watched her go, a hard lump forming in my chest. Dead, I thought. Please, don’t let her be dead.

  *

  It was typical. Just when I wanted it to, the blackness wouldn’t come. I was groggy but awake. And scared half out of my mind.

  Lena.

  My friend, I’d called her. But was she even that? She was more than a customer, I supposed. Someone I’d liked? Without question. But how long had I really known her? An hour? Two? Long enough to know there was an attraction, at least.

  And what did that make it when I’d taken her out on my bike? A first date?

  She’d seemed so animated when we’d ridden along the dirt track that led away from the cottage. So alive. Slapping me on the back and giggling as I accelerated beneath the rain-drenched trees. As if it was more than a trip for her. Like it was an escape, maybe.

  The door to my hospital room swung open and a lanky doctor hurried inside, the tails of his white coat flapping behind him. Dr Gaskell was struggling to keep up, looking paler and more lost than ever.

  ‘Mr Hale, I’m Dr Stanley.’

  He clicked on a penlight and pointed the beam into my eyes. It seemed a popular thing to do. I tried to snatch my head away but he had a firm grip of my eyelid with his thumb. He didn’t let go until he’d exhaled stale coffee across my face.

  ‘You’ve suffered a traumatic brain injury.’ He straightened and scratched at the stubble on his jaw. ‘Blunt trauma to the frontal lobe.’

  I pulled my mask free. ‘So I’ve been told.’

  ‘You can expect any number of side effects. Headaches. Dizziness. Nausea.’

  ‘We’ve been through this already.’

  ‘And confused thinking, Mr Hale. Cognitive disruption.’

  He stared at me, as if his words should penetrate in a particular way. As if there was a secret message lurking behind them.

  ‘I get it,’ I said. ‘There are consequences. But what about Lena? She’s not dead, is she?’

  Somehow, I managed to get the question out. I could feel more than just the soreness in the back of my throat.

  ‘This Lena. You say she was on the motorbike with you? That she was involved in the accident?’

  ‘She was in the first ambulance. But it’s OK – I know her injuries were more serious. The paramedic told me.’

  Dr Stanley let go of a long breath. His shoulders sagged. ‘But that’s exactly my point, Mr Hale. The fact is there was no other ambulance. You were the only one found at the scene of the crash.’

  Chapter Two

  My parents were sitting with me when the police arrived the following day.

  I’d spent most of the morning with Dad’s palm clamped over my lower leg and with Mum gripping my hand. It was good of them to come but I wished more than anything that I wasn’t putting them through this right now. The past few weeks had been rough on all of us and I knew they could have done without the added worry. It wasn’t as if they’d been getting their lives back together – in truth, I doubted they’d ever be capable of that – but I’d begun to sense a fragile new balance emerging. A way forward for us all, maybe. And now I’d gone and upset whatever shaky foundations we’d started to lay.

  Family friends had told me how well my parents were doing. That time would heal. Things would improve. But I saw it differently. It was obvious to me that a light had gone out of them. They bore the loss in their eyes most of all, and when they met my gaze straight on, which wasn’t often any more, it was like looking at precious stones that had been worn down until there was no glimmer left. Their pupils were dull and flat. Letting nothing inside.

  Maybe the change wouldn’t have been so hard to take if their spark hadn’t been so bright before. Cheesy as it sounds, my parents were a living, breathing romance novel. Mum, the vibrant, red-haired Scouse girl, who’d ignored her father’s wishes at the age of nineteen to take up with a strange Manxman on a windswept rock in the middle of the Irish Sea. And not just any strange Manxman, but one with a death wish – a daredevil motorbike racer who’d won the Senior TT two years on the bounce. A guy who liked a drink. Liked a girl. Who lived his life at speed. Or at least, he did until he fell headlong in love with the woman he’d now been married to for the best part of forty years.

  Grandpa had disowned my parents in the early stages of their marriage. Nowadays, he lived with them in Snaefell View, the residential care home they own and manage, and he couldn’t have a kinder word to say about my father if you handed him a thesaurus and a magnifying glass. I live there too, in a converted barn out back, with a garage on the side where Dad and I can strip down and rebuild my racing bikes. Amazing, really, that we’d become this perfect, Waltons-style unit. Maybe that was why we’d suffered so much just recently. Cosmic payback.

  The police entered my room shortly before noon. There were two of them, a man and a woman, both wearing dark suits.

  The man had an engorged head that was shaped like a pumpkin, a swollen, ruddy face and a generous belly. His grey hair was grown long over his ears and at the back of his wide neck. A navy-blue tie was knotted carelessly around his collar, like he resented it being there.

  The woman was younger, mid-to-late forties, with fine black hair cut short in a boyish style, no make-up, and a biro stain on the front of her faded blue blouse. Lean and angular, her movements had a gawky, abrupt quality. She carried a can of diet coke in one hand, a black raincoat folded over her arm.

  Dad knew them, of course. He knows everyone on the island. Or everyone knows him. I’m never sure which way round it should be. But the last time they’d spoken hadn’t been at some friendly get-together in a local pub, or at a Rotary dinner, and it showed. My father was slow in standing to accept the hand the man offered him, as if touching it might come at a price.

  ‘Jimmy.’ The man used the sombre tone of voice people had chosen to adopt with Dad just recently. ‘Sorry to see you back here.’ He spoke in a calm, measured way, like so many Manxmen of his generation. It was an easy quirk to misinterpret. Slow wo
rds for a slow thinker, you might imagine. And more often than not, you’d be wrong.

  He snuck a look at me. His crimson cheeks were puffed up, reducing his deep-set eyes to slits. It made it hard to read his expression. But there was something accusing back there.

  ‘Mick.’ Dad accepted his palm, pressing his free hand over the top, like a politician. ‘And Jackie.’ He stretched over my bed to pull the same move with the woman.

  ‘Mr Hale.’ She dropped Dad’s hand like a contagious disease. ‘And Mrs Hale. How are you?’

  I swear I could almost see the shutters flip closed across Mum’s eyes.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she replied, tight-lipped. ‘Thank you for asking, Detective Sergeant Teare.’ She found her feet now, but she was sluggish. Even standing up, she looked as if she was slowly deflating. ‘And Detective Inspector Shimmin. How’s Jude?’

  ‘Fine, fine,’ Pumpkin-head said, but he was watching me the entire time. ‘Took a fair old bump on the skull there, hey Robbie?’

  Talking like we’d met before. Like we were old friends.

  ‘Need to speak with you about this accident of yours. Now a good time?’

  As if I had any choice in the matter.

  ‘We’ll stay too,’ Dad said, clenching my foot through the bed covers.

  Pumpkin-head sucked air through his teeth and rose up on his toes, like a mechanic about to deliver unwanted news about a cooked engine. ‘Afraid we’re going to need to speak with the boy alone, Jimmy.’

  The boy. Like I was some kind of troublesome teen all set for a dressing-down.

  ‘But if it’s just a chat, Mick.’ Dad tilted his head to one side. ‘No harm us staying, is there?’

  Shimmin was easily a foot taller than my father, and this time, when he drew a sharp breath through his teeth, he rocked back on his heels, as if he was afraid of accidentally inhaling him. I’m tall myself, six feet two in my socks, so I understand the feeling of authority a little extra height can give a man. And Dad was shorter than he should have been, the result of the metal plates and pins that had once been used to knit the shattered bones of his lower legs back together. His racing career had been ended by a horrific crash along the Mountain section of the TT course, when he was cruising at well over 100 mph. He was lucky the incident hadn’t claimed his life.