“It’s true, isn’t it? Who are you?”
“I was hoping we could have a chat, Mr. Wylie.” His voice is officious, a deep, penetrating bass. “Inside, if you don’t mind.”
“How do you know my name?”
“If you give me five minutes of your time, I can explain.” His small blue eyes, sharp as flecks of ice in the fleshy folds of his face, stay fixed on mine. “If we could just go inside.”
A flare of alarm pulses in my chest. There is no one else here apart from Jess, asleep upstairs. The street is deserted. My mobile is charging in the kitchen, the landline out of reach. I remember the text from last night:Time for you to learn a lesson.
“It’s really not a good time. Sorry.”
I start to push the door closed.
He puts a big palm flat against the colored glass, stopping it dead.
His voice is low and flat. “I need to talk to you, Adam.”
“If you don’t leave, I’m going to call the—”
“About this.”
He reaches into his jacket and takes out a Rolex watch.
57
The stranger introduces himself as retired Detective Constable Gordon Webber, formerly with Notts Police and now a civilian investigator serving with something called the East Midlands Special Operations Unit.
He has some sort of official ID but it looks unconvincing and my instincts are still tingling: there is something about this man that doesn’t feel quite right, something in his manner, the tension in his shoulders. The sharp movements of his eyes. Although the Rolex looks like the real one—the one I had found upstairs—not the fake I’d bought online a couple of days ago.
“We can talk out here on your drive if you want,” he says. “But I don’t think you’ll want your neighbors to overhear what I’m going to tell you.”
“How long have you been retired?”
“A few years.” His expression remains blank. “Like I said, you have to surrender your warrant card when you finish. Otherwise there would be a million retired coppers all running around, using their IDs to stick their noses into God knows what.”
“Just like you’re doing now?”
“Give me ten minutes and I’ll tell you why I’m here.”
He takes his phone from his pocket, taps the screen a few times, and holds it out to me. The display is filled with an old story from theBBC East Midlands, the layout blocky and basicin the style of an old web page. I can’t see the date but the image seems to be of him reading a statement outside a large concrete-clad building—albeit a younger, leaner, less gray version of him. The caption says: “Detective Gordon Webber made a public appeal for information.”
“That was me,” he says. “Back in the day.”
I hand the phone back to him. I’ve had enough strangers in my house for one week, but there is still that old familiar itch of curiosity to hear what he’s got to say.
“They do really good coffee at the Trip,” I say. “And I could use the caffeine. If it’s all the same to you?”
Webber shrugs his big shoulders. “Fair enough.”
He doesn’t seem to have a car, so I drive us down the hill onto Castle Boulevard, then pull a left and park outside the Olde Trip to Jerusalem pub. We pass the couple of minutes’ journey in silence and he follows me into the garden seating area, past the familiar claim on the white-painted wall—the oldest inn in England—to a table in the far corner. It’s not busy, still a bit too early for the lunchtime crowd, but it feels better to be in a public place.
I get the drinks in and bring them out to the table, where he sits with his back to the wall puffing on a small black vape. The smoke has a sickly sweet cherry tinge to it.
He gives me a nod of thanks, taking a long pull on his pint of bitter. “Been a few years since I was in here.”
“It never changes,” I say. “Apart from the staff getting younger.”
He takes the Rolex from his jacket and lays it on the stained wooden table between us. As when he’d first shown me on the doorstep, the watch is sealed inside a clear plastic bag.
