Ewan Safe House

Main
ISBN: 978-0-571-28222-7
Verlag: Faber & Faber
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 464 Seiten

**Over 500,000 copies sold** Shortlisted for the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year 'An exciting, well crafted thriller.' SHARON BOLTON When Rob Hale crashes his motorcycle, the last thing he remembers is Lena's scream as their helmets crunched together - but when he wakes up in hospital, he's told Lena doesn't exist. The woman he describes looks like his sister, Laura, who recently died by suicide. Could he really have imagined her? Rob has to find answers, and finds himself aided by Rebecca Lewis, a London-based PI Rob's parents invited to the Isle of Man to investigate his sister's death. Except, she already knew his sister. Who is Rebecca, really? Searching for the truth together, Rob and Rebecca discover that even on an island where most people know each other, everyone has a secret to hide - and when you can't hide, your best option is to stay and fight. 'Ewan keeps the twists coming.' Independent on Sunday 'A high-octane thriller . . . a terrific holiday read.' Guardian

Chris Ewan is the award-winning author of The Good Thief's Guide to . . . series of mystery novels, which are in development with 20th Century Fox Television on behalf of showrunner Hart Hanson (Bones). His debut, The Good Thief's Guide to Amsterdam, won the Long Barn Books First Novel Award and is published in thirteen countries, and was followed by The Good Thief's Guide toParis, Vegas, Venice and Berlin. Born in Taunton in 1976, he now lives in Somerset with his wife, Jo, and their daughter. Safe House, his first stand-alone thriller, was a number one bestseller in 2012 and was shortlisted for the Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award. Dead Line, his second thriller, was published in 2013 and is optioned for film. Dark Tides was shortlisted for CrimeFest's eDunnit award for the best crime fiction eBook. www.chrisewan.com @chrisewan

Autoren/Hrsg.

Ewan, Chris

Leseproben

Chapter Two

My parents were sitting with me when the police arrived the following day.

I’d spent most of the morning with Dad’s palm clamped over my lower leg and with Mum gripping my hand. It was good of them to come but I wished more than anything that I wasn’t putting them through this right now. The past few weeks had been rough on all of us and I knew they could have done without the added worry. It wasn’t as if they’d been getting their lives back together – in truth, I doubted they’d ever be capable of that – but I’d begun to sense a fragile new balance emerging. A way forward for us all, maybe. And now I’d gone and upset whatever shaky foundations we’d started to lay.

Family friends had told me how well my parents were doing. That time would heal. Things would improve. But I saw it differently. It was obvious to me that a light had gone out of them. They bore the loss in their eyes most of all, and when they met my gaze straight on, which wasn’t often any more, it was like looking at precious stones that had been worn down until there was no glimmer left. Their pupils were dull and flat. Letting nothing inside.

Maybe the change wouldn’t have been so hard to take if their spark hadn’t been so bright before. Cheesy as it sounds, my parents were a living, breathing romance novel. Mum, the vibrant, red-haired Scouse girl, who’d ignored her father’s wishes at the age of nineteen to take up with a strange Manxman on a windswept rock in the middle of the Irish Sea. And not just any strange Manxman, but one with a death wish – a daredevil motorbike racer who’d won the Senior TT two years on the bounce. A guy who liked a drink. Liked a girl. Who lived his life at speed. Or at least, he did until he fell headlong in love with the woman he’d now been married to for the best part of forty years.

Grandpa had disowned my parents in the early stages of their marriage. Nowadays, he lived with them in Snaefell View, the residential care home they own and manage, and he couldn’t have a kinder word to say about my father if you handed him a thesaurus and a magnifying glass. I live there too, in a converted barn out back, with a garage on the side where Dad and I can strip down and rebuild my racing bikes. Amazing, really, that we’d become this perfect, Waltons-style unit. Maybe that was why we’d suffered so much just recently. Cosmic payback.

The police entered my room shortly before noon. There were two of them, a man and a woman, both wearing dark suits.

The man had an engorged head that was shaped like a pumpkin, a swollen, ruddy face and a generous belly. His grey hair was grown long over his ears and at the back of his wide neck. A navy-blue tie was knotted carelessly around his collar, like he resented it being there.

The woman was younger, mid-to-late forties, with fine black hair cut short in a boyish style, no make-up, and a biro stain on the front of her faded blue blouse. Lean and angular, her movements had a gawky, abrupt quality. She carried a can of diet coke in one hand, a black raincoat folded over her arm.

Dad knew them, of course. He knows everyone on the island. Or everyone knows him. I’m never sure which way round it should be. But the last time they’d spoken hadn’t been at some friendly get-together in a local pub, or at a Rotary dinner, and it showed. My father was slow in standing to accept the hand the man offered him, as if touching it might come at a price.

‘Jimmy.’ The man used the sombre tone of voice people had chosen to adopt with Dad just recently. ‘Sorry to see you back here.’ He spoke in a calm, measured way, like so many Manxmen of his generation. It was an easy quirk to misinterpret. Slow words for a slow thinker, you might imagine. And more often than not, you’d be wrong.

He snuck a look at me. His crimson cheeks were puffed up, reducing his deep-set eyes to slits. It made it hard to read his expression. But there was something accusing back there.

‘Mick.’ Dad accepted his palm, pressing his free hand over the top, like a politician. ‘And Jackie.’ He stretched over my bed to pull the same move with the woman.

‘Mr Hale.’ She dropped Dad’s hand like a contagious disease. ‘And Mrs Hale. How are you?’

I swear I could almost see the shutters flip closed across Mum’s eyes.

‘I’m fine,’ she replied, tight-lipped. ‘Thank you for asking, Detective Sergeant Teare.’ She found her feet now, but she was sluggish. Even standing up, she looked as if she was slowly deflating. ‘And Detective Inspector Shimmin. How’s Jude?’

‘Fine, fine,’ Pumpkin-head said, but he was watching me the entire time. ‘Took a fair old bump on the skull there, hey Robbie?’

Talking like we’d met before. Like we were old friends.

‘Need to speak with you about this accident of yours. Now a good time?’

As if I had any choice in the matter.

‘We’ll stay too,’ Dad said, clenching my foot through the bed covers.

Pumpkin-head sucked air through his teeth and rose up on his toes, like a mechanic about to deliver unwanted news about a cooked engine. ‘Afraid we’re going to need to speak with the boy alone, Jimmy.’

The boy. Like I was some kind of troublesome teen all set for a dressing-down.

‘But if it’s just a chat, Mick.’ Dad tilted his head to one side. ‘No harm us staying, is there?’

Shimmin was easily a foot taller than my father, and this time, when he drew a sharp breath through his teeth, he rocked back on his heels, as if he was afraid of accidentally inhaling him. I’m tall myself, six feet two in my socks, so I understand the feeling of authority a little extra height can give a man. And Dad was shorter than he should have been, the result of the metal plates and pins that had once been used to knit the shattered bones of his lower legs back together. His racing career had been ended by a horrific crash along the Mountain section of the TT course, when he was cruising at well over 100 mph. He was lucky the incident hadn’t claimed his life.

‘No can do, Jimmy. Procedure, see?’ Shimmin shook his bloated head, as if he was powerless to concede the point, even to a man as remarkable as my father. ‘How about you take Tess downstairs for one of those fancy coffees? We’ll come and find you when we’re finished. Won’t be long.’

Dad was all set to try again. I could feel it in the tightening of his fingers on my toes. He was used to getting special treatment on the island. The best table in a restaurant. A handsome discount in a shop. A forgiving smile when he parked on double yellow lines. It was the outcome of a combination of factors. His reputation as a local sporting legend. The swagger that came from riding away from certain death. And I don’t suppose it hurt that he was handsome. Square jaw. High forehead. Unruly, tousled hair. A powerful, muscular physique, gone a little soft in later years.

‘It’s OK, Dad,’ I said. ‘It’s not as if I have anything to hide.’

My father looked at me then, a broken expression on his slackened face. Mum reached for his arm. The ghost of a smile I hadn’t seen in a long time tugged at her lips.

‘Come on, Jim. Let them ask their questions. Rob will still be here when we get back. Right love?’

‘Yeah, Mum. I’ll be here.’

But it still scared me that she’d felt the need to ask.

*

‘Now then Robbie, why don’t you tell us about this mystery blonde of yours?’

Pumpkin-head had taken my father’s seat. He was reclined with his hands behind his fat neck and his crossed heels resting on the end of my bed.

‘It’s Robert,’ I said.

‘Eh?’

‘Or Rob. Not Robbie. I might be Jimmy Hale’s son, but I have my own identity. Some people respect that.’

Shimmin let go of a low whistle and glanced over his shoulder towards his colleague. Teare had taken up a position with her back against the wall, one leg bent at the knee, the sole of her shoe marking the beige paint. She took a long pull on her Coke, tapping an unpainted nail on the aluminium casing.

‘Chip on the shoulder there, young Robbie?’ Shimmin asked.

I rocked my head to the right, feeling the pull of the foam sling that had been wrapped around my neck and left wrist. There was a small porthole of glass in the door to my room, but all I could see on the other side was more beige.

‘Hey fella, come on. I’m a friend of your father’s, see?’

They were all friends of my father. Or so they told themselves.

‘And I know you and he are different.’ Shimmin snapped his fingers and I turned to find a dark shimmering in the pouched slits where his eyes lurked. ‘Anyone who’s watched you race these past three years can tell that easily enough, eh? Guess the acorn fell further from the tree than maybe you’d like to believe, young Robbie. Or maybe you remember it differently. Something else caused by that crack on your noggin.’

The blow to my head was something the neurologist had already discussed with me. I’d been fortunate, apparently. Early tests indicated there was no secondary swelling and the chances of it developing were said to be slim. I’d need to undergo more tests in a week or so, and watch for anything out of the ordinary – mood swings, difficulty keeping my balance, a change in my sleep patterns. I also had to take care to avoid any follow-up blows until the bruising had healed. But all things considered, it could have been worse.

‘So come on, lad.’ Shimmin tugged the knot of his tie away from his yellowing collar. ‘Tell us what you told the good...