Finder - Chapter 5

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr> <td valign="top" colspan=3 height=90 BGCOLOR="#3399FF" TEXT="#080000"> <div> <FONT SIZE="7" COLOR="#FFCC66" FACE="Times New Roman" ><I><B>Liz Berry Books</B></I></FONT><B>   </B></div> </td> </tr><tr> <td valign="top" width=160 BGCOLOR="#FFCC66" TEXT="#080000" background="08bd4c00dkelyh.png"> <div> <A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Liz Berry Books"><U><I><B>Home</B></I></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id17.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE=" Meet Liz "><U><I><B>Meet Liz</B></I></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id18.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Books"><U><I><B>Books</B></I></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id98.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Third Book/Creativity"><U><I><B>Third Book</B></I></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id29.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Messages"><U><I><B>Messages</B></I></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id30.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Bookstore"><U><I><B>Bookstore</B></I></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id31.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Contact Liz"><U><I><B>Contact Liz</B></I></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id32.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Links"><U><I><B>Links</B></I></U></A></div> <bR> </td> <td valign="top" height=390 BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000"> <div> <B>Finder </B></div> <div> <B> </B><FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#FF0033" FACE="Times New Roman" ><B>Chapter 5</B></FONT></div> <bR> <div> The next morning Alex took the underground to Oakwood. It was far out in the leafy north London suburbs, almost at the end of the Piccadilly line. Bev and Jake hadn't quite made it to Hadley Wood where the television stars lived, and had to settle for Acacia Drive, instead. Alex hated it. She had hated the big house ever since they had moved there, and Jake had married Bev.</div> <div> It had dramatic sweeping gables and wrought iron gates everywhere. A lot of people were big on wrought iron gates in Oakwood. An executive residence they called it. Very upwardly mobile. Commendable, if you didn't look too closely where the money came from.</div> <div> Alex stared at it with a sick feeling in her stomach. When she left, slamming the door, she had sworn never to set foot in the place again. But this morning she had awakened, knowing that however much she disliked the idea, she had to go there, and go there without delay.</div> <div> They had paved the front garden with fake marble terrazzo, and she could see through the side gate that a big conservatory had been built along the back of the house. Where had they got the money when the usual supply dried up?</div> <div> She let herself in with Jake's keys. Her own had hit the Thames with a satisfying splosh when she'd hurled them from Waterloo Bridge a year ago.</div> <div> She stood absolutely still in the hall, listening. It was eerily quiet. Why had she been hurrying? Nobody was coming back here ever again. She felt uneasy and shaky, knowing panic was only just beneath the surface. She was tempted to bolt out the front door and leg it down the road. Ridiculous. Her skin felt coldly clammy despite the central heating left on for their return.  Bev always felt the cold. But she wouldn't need it any more...</div> <div> Alex went into the kitchen. Perhaps if she made herself a hot drink she would feel better.</div> <div> The kitchen had been remodelled. It was now stark and beautiful with black units, stainless steel and glass, ruined by Bev's Mickey Mouse vase full of plastic flowers. It was surprisingly clean. Bev wasn't the best of housewives. Just boiling an egg she could turn the kitchen into a disaster zone.</div> <div> Alex took out a mug with a big-eyed fairy on the front - another of Bev's purchases - and made a cup of milkless tea. She sat on a tall stool, thinking.</div> <div> It looked as though Mrs. Mann had been in to clean up. Her usual day was Friday, so Bev and Jake must have been away for the whole weekend. What had they been doing? Where had they been staying? Alex couldn't remember the last time Bev had gone away for the weekend. She always worried about how to use the knives and forks and what to say to important people.</div> <div> Alex pushed the mug away, half-full, and stood up reluctantly. There was no point in going over all that. Better get on with the job and get out.</div> <div> Bev had wanted her <I>red bag.</I> Alex didn't have to puzzle over that. She remembered it only too well. They had carted that bag around from one grotty room to another, all the days of her childhood. Bev kept her most important letters and papers in the bag, and screamed at Alex if she touched it. She kept it in the place a moderately competent burglar would look first, Alex thought, in her bedroom on the top shelf of the built-in wardrobe.</div> <div> Upstairs, she found she was shaking. She could hardly bring herself to push open the door of Bev and Jake's bedroom.</div> <div> Nothing had changed. Thick peach coloured carpet, matching satin drapes and cushions, extravagantly shirred and frilled, the walls lined with peach coloured mirrors. Alex stared at them. They had replaced the mirrors then. She might have known that Bev wouldn't be without them. She had always loved Hollywood style mirrors.</div> <div> And there was the big, wide bed. Covered with a fake leopardskin bed cover. Alex tried not to look at the bed. The memories it brought back made her sweat even now.</div> <div> She went swiftly across to the wardrobe and flung open the doors, reaching up. The old bag was there all right. Cheap, zip-topped, the bright red plastic split, the stitching coming apart. A far cry from the expensive crocodile Bev had graduated to. Why had she kept it? Some sentimental memory of the old days, maybe.</div> <div> Alex unzipped the bag. It was full of folded papers, envelopes, a couple of small boxes that looked like jewellery boxes, and another wad of bank notes with an elastic band round them.Too much to look at now.</div> <div> Suddenly she wanted desperately to get out of the place. The tight feeling was growing in the pit of her stomach. Take the bag and go quick, <I>now.</I></div> <div> She hesitated. Before she left there was one more ritual to perform. She went across the landing and pushed open the door.</div> <div> Her old room hadn't changed either. She had thought that Bev would have thrown out everything. But it was as she had left it. The pictures of Boy Zone and Easy Connections still stuck on the wall. The frilly organdie draped dressing table still piled with all the make up and perfume. Her collection of cuddly toys sitting on the window seat. Her first ballet shoes hanging from a hook. The CD player and the television that Jake had bought for her. Love gifts, she had thought, but they were only bribes to keep her from asking where all the money she had earned, was going.</div> <div> She could hardly believe she'd ever managed to live here. Used those brushes. Danced in those shoes. Stretched out on the frilly white duvet, dreaming of Jake.</div> <div> <I>Crying in utter desolation.</I></div> <div> She could feel a trickle of perspiration on her forehead. It was like those musty old rooms in museums, Alex thought, that have been set up like a Regency parlour or a Victorian schoolroom.  Curious, but not real any more. A timewarp.</div> <div> She opened the wardrobe. Rows of clothes for every occasion with matching shoes lined up below. All carefully chosen by Jake. None of them her own choice.</div> <div> She was searching among the shoes for the pair of motor-cycle boots someone had once given her, which she had left behind and regretted ever since, when she heard a key rattle in the front door.</div> <div> Her heart turned over and began to pound. <I>Bev and Jake were coming home. </I>It had all been a crazy nightmare. It was the sound she had been half-expecting since she got here.</div> <div> She pulled herself together. Of course it wasn't Bev or Jake. She had seen them both lying dead, hadn't she? It must be Mrs. Mann. She would have heard the news and come in to see if everything was all right. She walked out on to the landing, and was about to call out, when she heard a deep male voice with a Caribbean accent say, 'Where we start, man?'</div> <div> 'Where there's a desk.' Rough cockney.</div> <div> Another London voice, better educated, older, said, 'That room there. Looks like it might be a study.'</div> <div> It was Jake's darkroom. The three of them went in and Alex heard them opening drawers.</div> <div> 'What we lookin' for again, man?'</div> <div> 'Anything that looks like an official document.' There was a rustle of paper and something crashing to the floor. 'Pick that up!  He said no mess, no evidence of break-in. He wants it all nice, clean and tidy. No neighbours asking questions. No police.'</div> <div> 'Looks like nothing here, man. A few old bills.'</div> <div> The shock had thrust Alex into a different time zone. Her brain had started to function again, at twice its normal speed, and there was a slow, buzzing anger underneath.</div> <div> <I>Where had they got the keys?</I></div> <div> No mystery. There had been a bunch of keys in Bev's handbag. Definitely not just ordinary burglars then. Not just a random mugging either.</div> <div> What were they after now? Documents of some kind. Something they hadn't found in Bev's black bag. Was it in the <I>red</I> bag then?</div> <div> And then it hit her. <I>This must be the same gang who had murdered Bev.</I> The anger burst into a flame. This time they weren't going to get anything.</div> <div> She edged towards the bathroom. If she stood on the side pipe below the bathroom window she could let herself down the drainpipe to the roof of the new conservatory. It was glass, but it had a wooden frame, and if she balanced along the frame she could drop down into the side entry and perhaps make it out to the road.</div> <div> She listened to the men moving around downstairs. She thought they had all moved into the dining room, when she saw just below her, looking into the kitchen, a big white man in his twenties, with a heavy beefy face and a shaven head. He said, 'Take a look at this.'</div> <div> Alex nearly groaned aloud. He wasn't admiring the kitchen. He must have seen the remains of her tea, still steaming nicely no doubt. She cursed herself for not listening to her sixth sense that had told her to get out of the place quickly.</div> <div> She moved noiselessly back into the bathroom and slid the lock across. It might delay them for a few minutes if they thought she was hiding there, and tried to break the door down. She eased the bathroom window open. She put the strap of the red bag across her body, tied the boots together and put them round her neck and zipped her bomber jacket over both to free her hands, and went out the window like a squirrel.</div> <div> The pipe felt strong enough to hold her weight, and she paused to close the window, in case they came outside to look, then let herself down on the flat conservatory roof, quietly. Her trainers had a good grip, and she was grateful for them, as she balanced along the frame. One wrong move and she would go crashing through the glass roof. But the frame was strong and she had a good sense of balance.</div> <div> She reached the end thankfully, and lowered herself over the edge, hung by her fingertips, and with only a few feet to drop, landed lightly in the side entry with hardly any noise.</div> <div> The wrought iron gate, which led out to the front of the house, was locked.</div> <div> Not stopping, Alex pulled herself up and over it in seconds - so much for Bev's security - and jumped down on the terrazzo in the front of the house.</div> <div> She could hear the men inside shouting and hammering on the bathroom door.</div> <div> She hesitated. Run to the neighbours? But most of them would be at work, the houses empty, and she would have only the one chance. There would be no time to go elsewhere. Too risky, she concluded. Her best chance would be to get right away and lose them.</div> <div> She took off, running flat out up Acacia Drive, cursing the length of the long suburban road. If she could only turn the corner before they saw her...Only a few metres more...</div> <div> She was nearly at the end of the road when she heard a shout behind her, and taking a quick look she saw the older white man running out the front door and pounding along the pavement after her. He was overweight and she thought she could out-run him. But she was frightened of the other two. Both the black man and the other white man were younger and they would be faster. They probably had a car too. The only place to go then, was the underground station.</div> <div> She was out into the main road now. If she could reach the station she could mingle with the crowd and...Her heart seemed to stop beating. At this time of the morning there would be no crowd. Oakwood was nearly at the end of the line. The rush hour was over. The platform and train would be nearly empty. The men would be able to pick her off as easy as an overripe raspberry.</div> <div> But suppose she didn't go to the station?</div> <div> Next to the station was a parade of shops set back, and she suddenly knew the one she wanted. She looked over her shoulder - the men hadn't reached the end of the road yet. She skidded to a stop, drew a sobbing breath and shot into Daisy Modes, slamming the door behind her.</div> <div> There was a round rack of sweaters just inside, and she seized one. 'I'll try this,' she gasped to the girl behind the counter and headed for the changing cubicles hidden near the far end of the shop. She leaned against the wall, shaking, trying to get her breath back.</div> <div> 'Haven't seen you for a while,' said the girl, sauntering up the shop.</div> <div> 'I don't live round here now,' said Alex. 'Listen, do me a favour? Look out the window and see if you can see anyone running along, as though they were looking for someone.'</div> <div> 'Upset your boyfriend?' said the girl, laughing.</div> <div> 'Something like that.'</div> <div> The assistant went back to the window and Alex hastily unzipped her jacket, put the boots and the red handbag on a stool, and pulled the bulky canary yellow sweater over her head.  Camouflage. It might just give her an edge.</div> <div> 'There's two of them,' said the girl. 'Who's the other one?'</div> <div> 'His mate.'</div> <div> 'They're going towards the station.'</div> <div> Her heart sank. What could she do now? They would spot her the moment she left the shop. She stared at herself in the mirror. They had only seen her for a few minutes, tearing down the road in her jeans and trainers and bomber jacket. She focussed again.</div> <div> 'You got a skirt to go with this jumper?'</div> <div> The girl sorted through a rack. 'Here. Size 8?'</div> <div> Alex pulled it on and zipped it up. A black mini skirt. Too big in the waist. She belted it tightly and pulled the sweater over it.</div> <div> 'The trainers look a bit funny. You've got nice long legs. Why don't you try a pair of heels?'</div> <div> There was a showcase of shoes. Three inch heels. Nobody ran in high heels. The perfect disguise. There was plenty of money in Bev's bag. 'Okay, size 6.'</div> <div> 'Tights? Leggings?'</div> <div> Alex nodded. 'Black, opaque.' It was so long since she'd worn a skirt and heels that she had forgotten all the extras.</div> <div> But there was still her distinctive shaggy black hair that looked like the mice had been at it. 'Have you got a scarf or something?'</div> <div> 'Oh no,' said the assistant horrified. 'Not a <I>scarf</I>. It'll ruin the effect. What about one of these new caps, then? We just had them in.' She rummaged in a cardboard box, and handed Alex a yellow and black leather cap with a full, floppy crown.</div> <div> It couldn't be better, Alex thought. It covered the whole of her head. She tilted the peak to one side. It made her look quite different. A saucy, carefree teenager, two years younger. A girl she had left behind.</div> <div> She stared at herself. Long black legs, mincing high heels, the shortest mini skirt she'd ever come across, the bright sweater and the yellow and black cap. She grinned reluctantly. Even her best friend wouldn't recognise her.</div> <div> The assistant beamed back at her, happily. She had been adding up her commission in her head. 'You look really good.  You know just how to wear things. You're not a model, are you?'</div> <div> The grin disappeared. 'No, I'm not. Look, are the men still there?' Surely they would have gone by now, realising they had lost her. She looked at the shop clock. Twenty minutes. Only twenty minutes since she had left the house.</div> <div> Obligingly the girl scanned the street. 'They've gone...No, wait a minute, one of them is on the corner by the station, just waiting about. I can't see the other one.'</div> <div> Alex considered her options. She could go back to the house and telephone the police. And tell them <I>what</I>? That there had been a break-in and that the men had chased her up the road? They would know something else was involved and they'd go on asking question after question. It would come out, all of it. She didn't think she could stand the way Leo and Cass would look at her then. Besides, there were the banknotes in Bev's bag. And what if the men came back to the house. One of them might still be there waiting for her.</div> <div> She couldn't stay in the shop, that was obvious. Already the girl was looking at her curiously.</div> <div> She should take a chance, now while they weren't expecting it. They had the station staked out, but it was her best option. If they spotted her and tried to drag her away, she would put up a big shrieking fight, which would have the station staff reaching for their mobiles. Safer there than on the empty streets, where they could bundle her into the back of a car and drive off without a second look. It had been done before.</div> <div> Alex made up her mind. She thanked the girl and paid for the clothes with some of Bev's money, hoping it wasn't stolen. She picked up her large Daisy Modes shopper, which now bulged with her jeans, jacket and trainers, the motor cycle boots and Bev's red bag, and swayed confidently out of the shop, just a carefree teenager on a shopping expedition.</div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id120.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Finder Chapter 6"><U><I><B>Chapter 6</B></I></U></A></div> <bR> <bR> <div> <I><B>Copyright Liz Berry 2002.  All rights reserved.</B></I></div> <div> <I><B>________________________________________</B></I></div> <div> <A HREF="id28.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Finder"><U><I><B>Finder </B></I></U></A><I><B> |  </B></I><A HREF="id18.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Books"><U><I><B>Books </B></I></U></A><I><B> | </B></I><A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Liz Berry Books"><U><I><B> Home</B></I></U></A></div> <div> <I><B>                  </B></I><I><B>                                </B></I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Times New Roman" >                                                                    </FONT></div> </td> <td valign="top" width=125 BGCOLOR="#3399FF" TEXT="#080000"> <div> <A HREF="id28.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Finder"><U><I><B>F</B></I></U></A><A HREF="id28.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Finder"><U><I><B>inder</B></I></U></A><FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#FF0033" FACE="Times New Roman" ><A HREF="id28.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Finder"><U><I><B> </B></I></U></A></FONT></div> <bR> <div> <I><B><IMG SRC="45b57500.jpg" border=0 width="87" height="80" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></I></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id43.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Finder Chapter 1"><U><I><B>Chapter 1</B></I></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id73.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Finder Chapter 2"><U><I><B>Chapter 2</B></I></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id74.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Finder Chapter 3"><U><I><B>Chapter 3</B></I></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id105.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Finder Chapter 4"><U><I><B>Chapter 4</B></I></U></A></div> <div> <I><B>Chapter 5</B></I></div> <div> <A HREF="id120.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Finder Chapter 6"><U><I><B>Chapter 6</B></I></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id125.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Finder Chapter 7"><U><I><B>Chapter 7</B></I></U></A></div> </td> </tr></table></body>