“I just thought, since he’s been writing to you, you’d be able to tell if he had killed anybody. You seem so intelligent.”
He had always been a sucker for flattery.
“Colin’s nothing more than a pawn.”
Ruth hurried out of the electronic prison gates and, with a quick glance around her, made directly for the plain black Fiat, which was parked across the way.
Inside, she began to shed. First, the long, dark-haired wig, which masked the fall of molten red she had been born with. Second, the electronic wire, which lay plastered against her chest. When she felt that her breathing had returned to normal, she turned to the man seated behind the wheel.
“Well? Did you get it?”
“Clear as a bell,” Lowerson replied, tugging the headphones from his ears. “He seemed to fall for it, hook, line and sinker.”
“It looks that way,” MacKenzie replied. “But he’s a devious, unscrupulous man. He might have made me as soon as he walked into the room; we have no way to know for sure. He might have been playing along for his own amusement.”
Lowerson’s ready smile turned down at the edges.
“If we work on the basis that he believes you’re one of his fans who can’t resist him –”
“He’s got the ego for it,” MacKenzie snorted.
“If he truly believes that’s who you were, then he could have been telling the truth about Colin. The chances of him recognising you from the newspapers or TV coverage are slim to none.”
“I avoid the media like I would a fungal infection,” she agreed roundly, running her fingers through her hair to shake off the feeling of having been in such close quarters.
“He seems to think Colin isn’t our man,” Lowerson said dubiously.
“Let’s get back to Ryan and talk it over.”
CHAPTER 20
Anna could see a car parked across the street. It had been sitting there for over three hours with a driver behind the wheel, though she couldn’t see whether it was anyone she recognised. She stepped back from where she had been snooping behind the curtain in her bedroom and unconsciously clutched at her throat.
Was this another case of paranoia?
She tried to think rationally. The little row of mews cottages on the street where she lived in Durham had long back gardens leading down to the river. At the front, they were approached by a narrow road, which forked off from the main road. The spot was idyllic, with wonderful views, but it was also isolated even though the city sprawled all around.
It certainly wasn’t the usual haunt of visitors looking for overflow parking while they took a turn around the city-centre. There were six cottages and she knew the cars belonging to each one, as well as their owners. Her own dark green Mini was parked directly in front of her cottage.
This car was out of place.
She worried at her lip for a minute, before reaching for her phone. She didn’t like to disturb Ryan, not when he was so busy, but there was nothing else for it.
The phone rang three times before he picked it up.
“Anna?” His strong, direct voice came down through the wires. Already, she felt better, which was a troubling thought for her feminine principles.
“Is everything alright?”
“I … Look, I’m sorry to bother you at work –”
“Hearing from you is never unwelcome,” his tone softened, wrapping itself around her like velvet.
“It’s probably nothing.”
“You wouldn’t have called if it were nothing,” he urged.
“There’s a car parked outside the house … well, a few doors down, but it’s been sitting there for over three hours. It might have been there even longer, but I was working in the study and then Mark visited –”
“Bowers?”
“Yes, he called in earlier,” she said distractedly. “But I came upstairs to change and I noticed the same car was sitting there. I first noticed it hours ago, when I opened the front door to Mark.”
Busted. Sticky wicket. Rumbled. All of these words entered Ryan’s mind and he realised the time had come to own up.
“Now don’t get upset –”
“That’s never a good way to begin a sentence.” Her voice had cooled by a few degrees.
“The car is probably one of ours,” he said. “I felt it was best to keep you under surveillance, just for the moment.”
There was a taut silence at the other end of the line and he rubbed the palm of his hand over his face, already expecting the fall out.
“I see.”
That was it?
“You do?”
“I see that, once again, you thought that you could control my movements, in a high-handed manner. You seem to have developed a unique talent for it.”