Nothing But Lies Read online

  ‘It’s OK,’ he told her, more as reassurance than from any belief that it was true. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes, yes. The man, he is over there!’

  Beyond the horse, Daniel could see another figure backed into the hedge and effectively held there by Taz, who was voicing all manner of dire warnings, not six inches from the man’s crotch.

  ‘Good boy. Quiet, Taz!’ Daniel said, moving closer, and the dog’s barking subsided into a low growl that was no less menacing.

  ‘You,’ he said to the man by the hedge, ‘who are you and what do you want?’

  Predictably, the man didn’t reply, apparently gaining confidence from Daniel’s control over the dog and choosing instead to try a cautious step to the side.

  ‘Stand still or I’ll set the dog on you,’ Daniel rapped out.

  The man did as he was told, even raising his arms a little as a sign of surrender. One hand was clearly empty; in the other, he held something but Daniel couldn’t make out what.

  ‘What is that? Drop it!’ he said sharply, afraid that it could be a weapon of some kind.

  The man opened his fingers and let the object fall.

  ‘Turn round and face the hedge and put your hands behind your back,’ Daniel told him. ‘Now, or I’ll send the dog!’

  Obediently, the man turned, and Daniel stepped forward, grasping one of his wrists and twisting it up, none too gently, to somewhere in the region of his shoulder blades.

  Taz crowded in and had to be ordered off.

  ‘Now, matey, you’re not going anywhere, so perhaps we’ll have some answers,’ Daniel snarled with some satisfaction, pulling the man away from the hedge and starting to march him back down the lane. In the almost total darkness, he could make out little more than the outline of his head.

  ‘Are you sure you’re OK?’ he asked Tamiko as he reached her.

  ‘Yes, I’m fine,’ Tamiko said a little shakily. ‘He grabbed me but then Taz comes and he let go again. Taz was amazing! I’ve got Rolo but not Babs,’ she added.

  ‘I’m sorry, but we’ll have to come back for her,’ Daniel said. ‘As long as you’re OK. If you’ve got your phone, can you call Jo-Ji? He should be on his way home, by now.’

  ‘Daniel, I’m sorry. I left it—’ she started to say, but was interrupted by the sound of an approaching vehicle.

  Any hopes that it was a car that might be flagged down for assistance were doomed almost immediately, as it became clear that it was being driven at speed.

  ‘Get off the road!’ Daniel shouted at Tamiko but before either of them had time to take evasive action, the vehicle was upon them, its lights dazzling, and instantly Daniel’s precarious control of the situation was shattered.

  Frightened by the speed of the car, Rolo swung his hind-quarters round in order to charge back down the road, and in so doing, cannoned into Daniel and his captive, knocking them both sideways. As he stumbled, trying to maintain his hold on the man, Daniel heard the screech of tortured rubber as the vehicle tried to break hard on the wet road and the next moment the smooth metal wing caught him a glancing blow and sent him spinning into the hedge for the second time that night.

  He heard Taz yelp and then start to bark furiously. Away down the lane, the horse’s hooves clattered on the road and, close by, someone yelled, ‘Get in!’

  For a fleeting moment, Daniel’s erstwhile captive was outlined by the interior lights of what was almost certainly a 4×4, and then the door slammed, the engine roared and it was away down the road, its headlights illuminating the galloping form of a horse in front of it. Of Tamiko, there was no sign.

  ‘Tami!’ he shouted, his voice sharp with fear for her, and to his intense relief, heard her call from further down the road.

  ‘Daniel! I’m OK. Where are you?’

  ‘I’m here,’ he called back, aware even as he said the words, that it was a singularly unhelpful thing to say in the circumstances.

  Taz homed in on the sound of his voice, fawning around him and licking his face with more enthusiasm than Daniel appreciated.

  ‘Yes, good lad. Give over now, will you?’ Daniel said, catching the dog’s collar and holding him at arm’s length. He became aware that he was, in fact, lying in the shallow ditch at the foot of the hedge; a ditch that for the last few months had probably been dry but which was now running with icy water from the earlier deluge.

  Feeling as if he’d just gone a few rounds with a sumo wrestler and then been dunked in a water trough, Daniel rolled over, climbed out and sat on the verge, doing a cautious mental inventory of his body parts. They all seemed to be in working order, if a little sore, and in due course he climbed to his feet.

  ‘Daniel? Are you OK?’ Tamiko had reached his side, and put her hand on his arm. He could feel her trembling.

  ‘I’ll live,’ he said with a wry smile she couldn’t see. ‘But I may need your healing hands tomorrow. And you? He didn’t hurt you? I heard you scream.’

  ‘No, I am OK but I was so scared. He was suddenly there, in front of me. He grabbed me and tried to make me walk with him, but I struggled and then Taz came and bit him, and he let me go.’

  ‘Bit him, did he? Well done that dog! I don’t suppose you’ve got any idea who it was?’ he asked without much optimism, and sensed rather than saw the shake of her head.

  ‘It was so dark and I think maybe he wore a hood, no – what is it called? Something that covers the face.’

  ‘A mask? A balaclava? Damn! Why, I wonder. Was it someone we would have known? Can you remember if he said anything, Tami? Anything at all? It could be important.’

  ‘He said I should go with him quietly and I wouldn’t be hurt, and then after, when Taz was here, he shouted at me to call the dog off,’ she said. ‘But I think, nothing else. Daniel – I was so frightened! Who were they? What did they want?’

  ‘I don’t know. I wish I did. But you were brilliant, Tami.’

  ‘I had to let Rolo go,’ Tamiko said then, miserably. ‘He could be anywhere, by now.’

  ‘Let’s get back to the house, then we can take the car out and look for them,’ Daniel suggested. ‘I want to check Jahan’s all right.’

  ‘Oh, my God! You don’t think …?’

  ‘Unlikely, given the attack on us,’ Daniel said, putting his arm round her shoulders as they began to walk. ‘They had got us away from the house, so if it was Jahan they wanted, why complicate things by coming after us?’

  Taz nudged his leg and he put his hand down to fondle the dog’s wet fur but found instead a hard metal object pressed into his hand. Taking it, he instantly recognised the shape.

  ‘Oh, good boy!’ he said warmly. ‘Tami, he’s found a torch. It must have been what the man was holding. Good lad, Taz. Clever dog! Come on, we should hurry in case they turn round and come back for another pop at us. Can you run?’

  ‘Yes, I want to,’ she said.

  ‘Great.’ He switched the light on and taking her hand, set off at a jog, back down the road towards the stables and the house. Beside them, Taz bounded happily; it had been an unexpectedly enjoyable outing for him.

  Daniel and Tamiko reached the house at almost exactly the same time as Jo-Ji let himself in the front door.

  ‘Hi,’ he said, seeing them come into the kitchen. ‘You’re late doing the horses. Everything all right?’

  He came through to meet them and his slight frown deepened to shock.

  ‘Christ! What happened to you two?’

  At the sight of her partner, Tamiko’s commendable self-control weakened and with a sob, she went towards him and was instantly folded in his arms.

  ‘Oh, Jo-Ji, it was awful. We’ve lost the horses!’ she said brokenly.

  ‘Lost them?’ Jo-Ji looked at Daniel over her head.

  ‘It’s a long story, but first I need to check on Jahan,’ Daniel said, turning sideways to get past them and heading for the stairs. Taking them two at a time, he went along the landing to the room where the boy slept. The door was aj
ar to allow the light from the landing to enter, and pushing it wider, he could see the contours of the child’s body under the bedclothes and his dark hair on the pillow. Jahan’s breathing was quiet and regular. He was fast asleep and safe.

  Daniel heaved a sigh of relief and leaned against the doorpost as the adrenalin that had been coursing through his veins for the past half hour began, all at once, to ebb, leaving him spent and shaky.

  Leaving the bedroom door as he’d found it, he collected two towels from the bathroom and went back downstairs, where Tamiko and Jo-Ji were anxiously waiting.

  ‘He’s fine,’ Daniel said wearily. ‘Thank God!’ He handed one of the towels to Tamiko, who took it and began to mechanically rub her wet hair.

  ‘Daniel, what happened?’ Jo-Ji asked. ‘Tami says you were attacked.’ He had his phone in his hand. ‘I need to call it in but they’ll want details.’

  ‘It was a trap. Whoever it was used bolt cutters to cut the chain and let the horses out and then waited for us to go looking for them,’ he said, rubbing his own hair and face. He touched a sore spot and the towel came away smeared with blood. ‘Somebody knows the routine. The horses weren’t far away. It’s my guess they had only just opened the gate. If they’d done it too soon, it’s possible someone else might have seen them and come to tell us. That wasn’t what they wanted, at all.’

  ‘So what did they want? And who were they, have you any idea?’

  ‘I don’t know. It was so bloody dark and raining, I couldn’t see anything much,’ Daniel said, wincing as he mopped his face again and saw fresh, dark blood. ‘And Tami said her man was wearing a balaclava or something similar.’

  ‘Are you OK? You look a mess,’ Jo-Ji said, frowning.

  ‘Nothing major,’ Daniel said, dismissively.

  ‘Nevertheless, we should get you patched up.’

  ‘First things first. The horses are still loose. We need to get out there and find them.’

  ‘Five minutes to get some dry clothes on won’t make much difference. You’re both wet through and Tami’s shivering, aren’t you, love?’

  Tami nodded, miserably

  ‘It’s partly shock, I expect. She’s had a horrible time, but she was absolutely brilliant,’ Daniel said.

  ‘Either way, she needs to be warmed up. Go on, love, go and change. You too, Dan. I’ll call it in and see if there’s a car in the area that can help look for the horses. I expect they’ll send SOCO out too, but God knows how long it’ll be before we see them. There was a major incident at Templemeads earlier and they’ll be tied up there for ages.’

  Tamiko went obediently upstairs but Daniel held back.

  ‘I wasn’t entirely honest, just then,’ he admitted softly. ‘I’m pretty sure what they were after was Tami. They split us up and she said the man who caught her tried to make her go with him. My guy was more interested in making sure I didn’t go anywhere, as you can see,’ he added, indicating his face.

  ‘There were two of them?’

  ‘Three, I think. I left my chappie pretty well trussed up, but within a few minutes I’m pretty sure he was in the Land Rover that nearly creamed the lot of us. Someone must have cut him loose. I’d swear he couldn’t have done it himself.’

  Jo-Ji ran his fingers through his black fringe and down the back of his head, his good-natured face deeply worried.

  ‘It may just be a coincidence but Roy Bartlett’s disappeared.’

  ‘Roy Bartlett? Oh, the crack dealer you told me about. When did this happen?’

  ‘A couple of days ago.’

  ‘And you were going to tell me, when?’

  ‘No, I only found out today, just before I came off duty. I would’ve told you if I’d known, of course I would.’

  ‘Sorry. I guess I’m a bit on edge. Do you really think he’s behind this?’

  ‘I don’t know, I really don’t. My instinct is to say no. Not that he isn’t capable of it, but from my dealings with him, I’d say taking Tami out permanently would be more his style. Subtlety isn’t a word he’d be familiar with, and abduction would be far more risky – for him.’

  ‘Oh, I nearly forgot!’ Daniel exclaimed. ‘I took these off my guy when I had him tied up.’ He produced the phone and other items from his pockets and put them on the kitchen table. A half dozen or so coins jingled and settled beside the expensive looking cigarette lighter, the cheap, broken phone, and three rather soggy pieces of paper, two of which proved to be banknotes, the other a receipt for an Indian takeaway meal.

  ‘Sorry, SOCO will no doubt curse me. I’ve probably compromised any forensic evidence there might have been, but I didn’t have time to do anything else; I had to go after Tami. The phone’s smashed but you might still get something from it or the receipt, maybe. There’s the torch, as well. That belonged to the man who tried to snatch Tami. I’m afraid we used it on the way back, but it had already been in the ditch and Taz’s mouth, so it was never going to be great. You might get a partial, I suppose, but if they wore masks, they may well have had gloves, as well.’

  ‘Expensive lighter,’ Jo-Ji said thoughtfully. ‘Looks like gold-plate.’ He took a thin plastic glove from his pocket, put it on and carefully picked the lighter up. ‘Initials,’ he said. ‘GKS. Ring any bells?’

  Daniel pursed his lips and shook his head. ‘Not right away. Oh, actually – what was the name of the guy whose car was stolen? You know, the one that was sitting out here earlier.’

  ‘Graham Siddons. Damn!’

  ‘Yeah. Could be a coincidence, I suppose,’ Daniel said. ‘But I’m guessing not. But at least that proves that the man who stole the car and was watching the house, earlier, was the one who attacked me. No chance he’s actually connected to this Siddons bloke?’

  ‘No. I don’t think so. I did take a look. Mr Siddons is sixty-nine; a retired bus driver; lives with his wife, plays bowls and goes off most weekends in his VW campervan to club rallies.’

  ‘Not your average criminal profile,’ Daniel agreed. ‘Look, Joey … Um … Do we have to make a big thing of this? I mean, apart from this little lot, there’ll be bugger all to interest SOCO out there after all the rain and the thought of half Bristol Met descending on us until the early hours is, quite frankly, beyond tedious.’

  ‘I’ll have to call it in,’ Jo-Ji said. ‘For one thing, how else do we explain these?’ He gestured at the items on the table. ‘And for another, it could have some bearing on what happened to Hana.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. But what say we play it down a bit?’

  Jo-Ji frowned, pushing his fringe out of his eyes in a characteristic manner.

  ‘If I call for that car, they’ll want all the details, you know how it works. I don’t want them to think I’m trying to hide anything.’

  ‘Who is hiding?’ Tamiko had come downstairs again looking much warmer in dry jeans and a sweater.

  ‘No one. Dan wants to play it down.’

  ‘What?’ She turned wide, anxious eyes on Daniel.

  ‘The whole thing. What happened tonight,’ Jo-Ji answered.

  ‘Only to avoid hassle,’ Daniel put in. ‘Obviously we have to report it, but can’t we just say two men tried to get you into a car but the dog scared them off?’

  ‘With you looking like you’ve been in a car crash, I think they’re going to know there was a bit more to it than that,’ Jo-Ji protested. ‘Look, you know how it is. They’ll keep asking questions until one of you contradicts the other. I could get into trouble, here.’

  Daniel held his hands up. ‘OK, I give in.’

  ‘I’ll ask them to go easy on you,’ Jo-Ji said, finding the number on his mobile.

  ‘I think it is possibly, the horses may have come home by themselves,’ Tamiko said. ‘Shall I go and look before you talk to work?’

  ‘I’ll go,’ Daniel said.

  ‘But if they are still excitable, they might not come to you,’ she said.

  ‘Then we’ll both go. From now on, you go nowhere alone – not even in the ga
rden. Promise?’

  Tamiko looked from Daniel to Jo-Ji for confirmation, her eyes huge in her heart-shaped face.

  Her partner nodded. ‘He’s right, sweetheart. We can’t be too careful.’

  ‘You are scaring me. I don’t understand what is happening,’ she said. ‘Who does these things, and why?’

  ‘I wish I knew,’ Jo-Ji told her. ‘But we will find out, and when we do, they won’t know what’s hit them, I promise you that!’

  The horses hadn’t come back, and after a short argument, during which Jo-Ji was reluctantly brought to see that of all of them, he would be the least useful on a horse-catching foray, he was left to stand guard over the sleeping boy. Tamiko and Daniel took the car, the dog, two buckets of food pellets and carrots, and two more lead ropes, and drove slowly along the lane in search of the runaways.

  They came across Babs first, not half a mile from home and grazing on the grass verge, outlined by the lights of another car that had stopped twenty feet or so on the far side of her.

  Tamiko was all for getting out of the car as soon as Daniel pulled up, but he caught her arm.

  ‘Wait! We don’t know who’s in that other car.’

  She looked shocked.

  ‘You don’t think it’s them?’

  ‘Probably not, but we can’t take any chances. I’ll go. You lock the doors as soon as I’m out; get into the driver’s seat and be ready to go in reverse as fast as you can, if anything happens.’

  ‘Leave you here?’

  ‘I’ll be OK. They’re not interested in me,’ he said, with more confidence than he felt.

  He reached for one of the buckets and a lead rope, but before he could get out, they saw the passenger door of the other car open and someone get out. The Merc’s lights instantly picked out a fluorescent tabard and the shining blue and green Battenburg pattern on the car’s door, and Daniel heaved a silent sigh. In spite of his assurances to Tamiko, he hadn’t relished the idea of walking into the dazzling headlights of the other car, not knowing who might be waiting beyond.