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At the next junction, Maggie pulled off the motorway and found a discreet gateway to stop in. There she proceeded to remove the registration plates and replace them with the pair which Sam had stashed in the boot. She knew it was a risk. If Sam was on the side of the bastards who were after her, then they could be looking out for these number plates too. But it ought to buy her a bit of time. Quite how much, she didn’t know. But for the time being it was the best she could come up with.
Maggie turned the car round and rejoined the M5. This time she headed north, back the way she had come.
* * *
When your child’s father rings up and begs you for help, it ought to be a no-brainer. You help.
Sinead had received the phone call from Sam seconds after the text from Bowman. Bowman had made what appeared to be a veiled threat. It wasn’t the first time and she knew it was unlikely to be the last. Unless . . .
As for Sam, Sinead had never told him he was Jake’s father. In her darker moments — driving back from Penrith for example — she told herself it was just as well. And would it have changed anything if she had?
Way back, she had been a port in a storm for him. It had lasted only a few days and then he had gone. Nine months later, she had given birth to Jake. She had said nothing then or since. On the rare occasions that Sam had stopped by — usually for a meal and a place to crash for the night — he had shown no interest in Jake’s parentage. So she had never told him. What would have been the point?
Now, when he rang, Sam had sounded desperate. Maybe he was exaggerating — he knew how to press all the right buttons. Maggie had apparently gone off with the car, Beth and his mobile phone and left a pile of broken glass on the floor for him to stamp on. His right foot was a total mess. Fortunately, Sam was a man who always had at least one spare pay-as-you-go mobile in his possession and Maggie had failed to find it, stuffed under the mattress on his side of the bed. Whatever else she thought of Sam — and he occupied too much of her thoughts — he was resourceful.
‘Don’t use your own car,’ he had said. ‘They’ll be watching out for it.’
So she drove the half mile to her mother’s and asked her to keep her grandson for another day. ‘And do you mind if I borrow your car? I’ve got a long trip to make and yours is so much more comfortable.’
Her rendezvous with Bowman was set for nine o’clock, giving her some sort of head start. Bowman would go ballistic when he realised she wasn’t going to turn up, but she would take that chance. Once she had sorted Sam out, she would ring Bowman and make her apologies.
* * *
For the second time that morning, Reid looked up irritably from his desk to see his sergeant barging into his office without so much as an ‘excuse me, guv!’ Once more the flimsy door banged against the filing cabinet behind it. The partition wall shuddered.
‘You’ve got to see this!’ Ashcroft insisted, towering over the desk. He was looking more disreputable with every passing hour. Three buttons of his crump
led white shirt were undone, revealing unappetising glimpses of a hairy stomach. A coffee stain trailed down the right-hand panel. It reminded Reid of snail slime.
‘The CCTV, guv,’ he explained, oblivious to the effect he was having on his boss.
Reid had been on the verge of giving Ashcroft a bollocking, but he got no further than opening his mouth. The reality was that he was absolutely knackered and pretty disillusioned too. He was barely up to a game of tiddly winks, let alone a shouting match with his two-timing sergeant.
Ashcroft took his silence for approval and returned whence he had come. Reid got to his feet and followed his sergeant across the open plan space to a desk where an excessively eager geek called Harry was sat in front of a computer screen twice the size of his own. Harry had only been there a few days, but already he seemed to be the go-to guy for anything technical or boring. Sifting through CCTV was both.
‘I reckon this is your target, sir. Pulling into the supermarket car park right here. The car goes left and out of sight here, but . . .’ Harry did something clever and they were watching another camera. ‘Three seconds later, here’s the car again. Moving further left, until it gets out of visual range.’
Harry did something else clever. ‘Map of the car park. I’ve marked in fuchsia the path the car took. It must have parked in the shaded green area, because otherwise it would be visible in some of the other CCTV. The red cross shows the site of the ATM where the withdrawal took place.’
Smarty-pants Harry paused. Upping the drama? Reid was feeling vinegar-sour. Harry flicked to yet another camera. ‘This is two-and-a-half minutes later. A person in an anorak, hood and scarf over the face goes to the ATM and withdraws the money. An exact match, timewise. Then returns across the car park. Three minutes later drives out the car park.’
‘Thank you.’ Reid hoped his tone would pre-empt any further running commentary from Harry. ‘So who is the registered owner of the car?’
‘Sinead Parkinson.’ Ashcroft jumped in before anyone else could steal his role as announcer of dramatic news.
‘What do we know about her?’
‘She’s got some form. Bit of an agitator. Arrested twice for protesting and once for trespassing on MOD property. Two fines. One suspended sentence. After that she dropped off the radar. No more arrests or incidents in the last five years.’
‘Any connection with Maggie Rogers?’
‘Not sure. They could easily have met. But it’ll be tricky to prove.’
‘I’m not a court of law,’ Reid snapped. ‘I don’t need proof. I need to know if there is any evidence that points strongly to them having a shared history. Have they ever lived in the same town or street? Cohabited? Shared a squat?’
‘We can’t rule it out,’ Ashcroft said, on the defensive. ‘Both protested in the 2006 anti-war march in London.’
‘Half a million people went on that, for God’s sake. So unless you’re hiding a photo of them marching arm in arm down Park Lane, you had better try a bit harder.’
