deceptive. More than one or two rivals had misjudged the man’s intelligence and guile and not all had lived to regret their mistakes.
‘I just want to see him, that’s all,’ Savage said. ‘I’ll decide what to do afterwards.’
‘Right.’ Fallon chuckled. ‘Ask him if he’ll say sorry and then kiss and make up? After that maybe send each other Christmas cards every year.’
Savage didn’t respond. She stared at the traffic rushing towards them on the other side of the road. Headlong. That’s what it felt like sometimes. Her family had been wronged, Clarissa killed. Nobody punished. How could that be right?
‘Whatever.’ Fallon spoke again. Took one hand off the steering wheel and patted her on the knee. ‘Uncle Kenny will sort things for you. Mind you, considering who the killer is, we’ll need to go careful. You don’t go messing with the Chief Constable’s son.’
When Savage had discovered the truth, it had at first seemed unbelievable. But then, turning things over in her mind, it had made more sense. How, for instance, the driver of the car which had hit Clarissa had managed to avoid detection. The police had known the make and model – a Subaru Impreza – yet they hadn’t been able to track down the owner. That Simon Fox was behind this failure to find and implicate Owen, was in no doubt in Savage’s mind. The trail must’ve been covered up, records obfuscated, perhaps even officers told to keep quiet.
A few minutes later and they were on the outskirts of Torquay, the Range Rover purring through a recently built estate. Neat little lawns with brick-paved driveways stood in front of two- and three-bedroomed houses. This was the preserve of newly formed families, the first or second step on the housing ladder. Owen lived here with his wife and young children. Did he sleep easy at night in the serenity of his suburban idyll? Or did he toss and turn with worry, Clarissa Savage haunting his dreams?
‘There,’ Fallon said, his head turning to the left as they drove past a house with a red door, a car sitting on the driveway. Not an Impreza; a Ford. ‘Happy families, hey?’
Fallon drove on and pulled up a short way along the road. Savage craned her neck to look back. As she did so the front door of the house swung open and a young woman appeared holding a baby in her arms, an older kid of four or five by her side. She stepped out of the house, closed the door, and went over to the car. Savage turned away as the woman busied herself with strapping the baby into a car seat, while the other child climbed in.
This wasn’t what she had been expecting at all. She needed to hate Owen, to see him as some sort of demon. Instead Savage was wondering how on earth she was going to go through with what she’d planned.
‘Can’t stop long, Charlotte,’ Fallon said, nodding through the windscreen to where a woman had raised her head from a flower bed and was paying them rather too much attention. ‘My motor. A bit flash for round here. Time to move on.’
Move on.
Could she? There had to be some sort of resolution, some settling of the score. Or did it go further than that – maybe stretching to something approaching vengeance? She wasn’t sure what she wanted any more.
‘Go,’ Savage said. ‘Just fucking go.’
Fallon raised his eyebrows, then put the vehicle into gear and eased forward. The road was a close, at the end a turning circle. Fallon manoeuvred round and headed back past the house. Owen’s wife had by now reversed into the road and she drove off, with the Range Rover following.
‘We could tail them,’ Fallon said. ‘Her and the kiddies. Find out where they’re going. Might be useful if we need to come back and give them a bit of a scare.’
‘No!’ Savage thumped the dash. ‘My argument is with Owen. We leave them alone, got it?’
‘OK, love. It was just a bloody suggestion.’
‘Look, Kenny, it’s not that I’m ungrateful for what you’ve done. Finding out who did it, tracing Owen, all that. But I’m the one who has to make the decision as to what to do.’
‘Sure.’ Up ahead the Ford indicated left. Fallon drove straight on. ‘But you’re going to make him pay, aren’t you? After all, it would be a shame to waste all the effort me and DS Riley put into finding him.’
DS Darius Riley.
Working off his own bat, he had followed a lead provided by Fallon. The lead had led to Owen via a breaker’s yard and a dodgy car body repair shop. Riley was part of the problem, part of the reason Savage had spent so many nights lying awake trying to decide what to do. If Riley hadn’t been involved she was pretty sure she’d have done something by now. Something stupid.
Savage watched the Ford disappear down the side street.
‘It won’t be wasted,’ she said. ‘And I do mean to make him pay. I do.’
‘Well then, let’s go and find the lad shall we?’ Fallon slowed the Range Rover and pulled in at the entrance to a brown-field site where the gates to a half-completed development hung shut for the weekend. Savage stared at a big yellow digger and then at Fallon as he reached across and opened the glove compartment. ‘But first …’
‘What are you doing?’
‘This.’ Fallon pulled out something wrapped in an oily towel and plonked the parcel on Savage’s lap. ‘A present from Uncle Kenny. Birthday, Christmas, whatever.’
Savage felt the weight of the object on her legs. Knew what was inside the towel without looking. ‘Kenny?’
‘Untraceable. A full clip. More if you need them but one is all it takes.’
‘Shit. I don’t know if—’
‘Think on it.’ Fallon engaged first gear and eased the car back onto the road. ‘My old man always told me regrets are for losers. He was right. Winners don’t have doubts, do they?’
‘No,’ Savage said as she folded back the rag to reveal the automatic pistol. ‘I guess they don’t.’
Then she picked up the weapon and slipped the cold steel into her jacket pocket.
DS Darius Riley stood on a desolate stretch of moorland some five miles to the west of Fernworthy Reservoir. Apart from the track he’d driven down and the dark granite of a couple of nearby tors there was nothing but grass, low scrub and heather in all directions. Not for the first time since his arrival in Devon some two years ago, he reflected on the way his life had changed since then. South London seemed a very long way away, his Caribbean heritage even further.
For a moment Riley looked east where, far away, something hung in the air above the moor, hovering like a kestrel. But he knew the object wasn’t a bird. The smudge was a helicopter. Call sign NPAS-44. Air Operations. The helicopter was looking for the missing Hungarian girl, and there’d be people on the ground too. He shook his head. That’s where the action was. Officers hunting for clues, piecing the evidence together, coming up with theories. He gave a silent curse and turned back to the job in hand.
‘Crap.’ That from DI Phil Davies. Pissed-off too. He articulated Riley’s thoughts. ‘Call this police work? I don’t. We should be over at the reservoir or knocking on a few doors and unsettling some of the local nonces. Sort it, Darius, because I want to get back home in time for Sunday lunch.’
