‘I’m trying.’
She brings the car to a safe standstill, the music still playing.
‘Shitters, I knew it was too good to last,’ she says as Jake finally manages to turn off the sound system.
‘What?’
Bex sits back, shaking her head. ‘The car’s been disabled.’
‘Really?’
She tries again, but a message confirms that the car isn’t going anywhere. They sit there in silence, staring ahead in the heat and the dark as Bex tries in vain to start the car. And then a video of a burning log-fire flickers into life on the touchscreen.
‘What the hell?’ Jake says.
The death metal music starts up again. Jake reaches for the door. He can’t seem to open it.
‘Shit, it’s locked.’ He’s starting to panic. ‘It’s so hot in here.’
There’s a click and the door is unlocked. Jake’s not sure if it was him, Bex or someone else. The cool night air floods into the car as Bex and Jake look at each other, both of them shaken.
‘I don’t think Rob wants us to drive to London,’ she says.
Tuesday
78
Silas
Strover is already in the Parade Room when Silas arrives. He glances at his watch. Seven a.m. He’s only been away from this place for six hours. They both need to get some balance in their lives.
‘Please don’t tell me you’ve already been for a run,’ he says, sitting down next to her.
Strover’s hair is wet, as if she’s recently showered after an effortless dawn 10k. His own fitness regime couldn’t be going worse. Fifteen sit-ups this morning, feet wedged under the bed, and he began to feel dizzy. He didn’t sleep well last night either, troubled by what Jake had told him. Why was Rob visiting Gablecross – and before he met Kate for the first time at the Great Western Hospital?
Maybe Silas was too relaxed last night about Kate staying at Rob’s London apartment.
‘I wanted to talk to Thailand,’ Strover says. ‘They’re six hours ahead.’
‘Anything interesting?’ He’s asked her to look into the gun used in Cornwall, last fired in Bangkok nine years ago, and the Thai police file on Gilmour Martin, the same name as the registered keeper of a Tesla recently seen in Cornwall. It’s too much of a coincidence to ignore, but his boss will no doubt dismiss it as circumstantial.
‘The police over there are proving helpful about Gilmour,’ Strover says.
They could do with some more information. The Royal Thai Police file was not exactly bulging with detail.
‘I managed to get through to one of the detectives who interviewed him after he crashed the party,’ she continues, glancing at her notes. ‘An officer called Manu Jabthian. He’s teaching these days, at somewhere called the Bang Kaen Detective Training School.’
Nice work if you can get it. Maybe Silas should offer his services. He fancies a trip to Thailand.
‘How long have you been in?’ he asks, knowing that this sort of spadework takes time.
‘I couldn’t sleep,’ Strover says.
‘You’ll make yourself ill,’ Silas says, particularly if she eats a single apple every morning and insists on calling it breakfast. Kate was pushed too hard. He’s wary of Strover going the same way.
‘Manu says he remembers the case well,’ Strover continues, checking her notes again.
‘What exactly was Gilmour arrested for?’
‘Causing trouble at a private party on Ko Samui – Chaweng beach, in the northeast of the island.’
‘Is that all?’ he asks.
‘Off his head on drugs, apparently. But get this – someone saw Gilmour on the beach waving around a handgun. That’s why the police were called.’
Silas looks up.
‘Do we know what sort of gun?’
‘According to Manu, Gilmour was unarmed by the time the police arrested him. They let him go in the end – nobody at the party was willing to give statements. He had no ID or passport on him and wasn’t making a lot of sense, but they assumed he was British.’
‘What happened to him afterwards?’ Silas asks, looking at the police mugshot again, his mind racing.
‘That’s why Manu remembers the case,’ she says. ‘Two days later, a body washes up on the same beach, gunshot wound to the head. The police try to call in Gilmour for questioning again, but they can’t find him. He’s vanished.’
‘And the bullet?’
He already knows the answer.
‘Same markings as the one fired in Cornwall.’
His boss is going to love this.
‘Who was the victim?’ Silas asks.
‘Small-time drug dealer from Bangkok. Police weren’t too concerned.’
He knows the feeling. But the Royal Thai Police would have filed a report linking the Ko Samui case to Gilmour Martin, suspected of being a UK citizen. No real evidence, but enough for the National Ballistics Intelligence Service to flag up a possible British connection.
‘Do we have any idea where Gilmour is now?’ Silas asks.
‘The Home Office doesn’t have a record of anyone of that name matching his age,’ she says, turning to her laptop. ‘I’ve looked everywhere else too. Mispers, Europol, Interpol.’
He knows Strover would have been thorough, doesn’t want to think how long she’s already been working on this.
What about the DVLA?’ he asks. ‘Anything on the “care of” address in London?’
‘I’m still trying to establish exactly who lives there,’ she says. ‘No other vehicles registered at the property. Seems like it’s owned by a shell company in the Cayman Islands. Wouldn’t mind taking a look in person.’
‘And maybe get your friend in digital forensics to help with information on Gilmour,’ he says.
‘She’s already had a trawl. No social-media footprint, nothing. But she did find one thing.’
Silas looks up. He’s come to recognise Strover’s tone when she’s onto something.
‘A person calling himself Gilmour Martin appears to have flown into Stansted from Cork on a British passport six months ago,’ she says. ‘And given the Home Office has no record of a Gilmour Martin matching his age, it must have been a fake.’
Silas is aware that passports aren’t always checked as closely as they should be on flights from Ireland to the UK, but there’s also been a recent rise in convincing counterfeits. And many of the best are coming out of Bangkok.
‘I’m trying to get a photo and flight manifests, but it’s going to take time,’ Strover says.
‘Just don’t tell the boss what you’re doing,’ Silas says.
‘We should tell Kate, though – she asked us to look for a match for Rob and she still doesn’t know about Gilmour Martin.’
The discovery is hardly going to put her mind at rest.
79
Kate
Kate knows she’s woken late. Not because of the daylight outside – the steel blinds are still down and it’s dark in the apartment, a faint light seeping in from the bedroom. It’s just a feeling. She sits up on the sofa, the memories of last night flooding back. She’s here in the main room with a blanket because she was sick – after thinking again that Rob had been replaced by a double. Knowing, not thinking. There’s no way her Rob would have known what she was saying in French, given her that look of understanding. He could barely speak a word when she tried teaching him. She hasn’t got Capgras.