Serial: Final part of Caught In A Web by Gabrielle Mullarkey

Things were going from bad to worse, but could she somehow get them out of this?

Ifind myself face-to-face with a hooded figure in a black tracksuit. The hood is lowered to reveal Inspector Charlotte Foster. She puts a finger to her lips. I notice a discreet earpiece, its lead snaking into the top of her tracksuit.

‘Looks like we’re after the same thing,’ she whispers, nodding at the plastic bag. ‘How did you get in?’ I hiss. ‘There’s a tree overhanging a wall at the side. We’ve been watching the place, and we noticed he leaves his utility room door open during the day. As I’m sure you know, we get tips from the professionals.’

I do – but I also know that sneaking into people’s houses doesn’t often hold up in court.

‘Shouldn’t you have got a warrant?’ I ask.

‘I’ve left no sign of forced entry. We’ve had our eye on Cosgrave for a while. It’s become increasingly obvious he’s involved in something.’

‘Yes, the death of Jez Lambert,’ I say.

Foster nods. ‘I’ll call for back-up,’ she whispers. ‘Don’t move from this room while

I’m gone. Anyone else around who might be in danger, just in case Cosgrave turns nasty? He could have cronies a quick phone call away.’

‘Lacey!’ I gasp. ‘My stepdaughter. She’s up the road, in The Green Man pub. Simon doesn’t know that, but she’s arranged to come and get me by a certain time. It’s ages yet, though…’

‘Let’s not take any chances,’ Foster interrupts. ‘Stay put, act normal around Cosgrave. Give me the USB stick for

safe-keeping and I’ll find your daughter, explain the situation and escort her to safety. Back-up will be here shortly.’

I do as she says, and she slips out of the door, leaving me bereft. How long before Simon gets suspicious and comes looking for me? I tiptoe to the door and press my ear against it. I can’t hear anything in the kitchen. That makes me more anxious.

Many minutes pass, then the doorknob starts to turn. I step back, heart hammering in my chest.

It’s Charlotte Foster again. ‘I’ve got Lacey,’ she hisses. ‘Let’s go!’

I creep down the hallway after her, looking back at the kitchen door, which is now shut. Bit odd that Simon stayed in there all this time…

Foster is now heading down the driveway towards a car parked just beyond mine. I could almost cry with relief when I see Lacey inside.

Foster unlocks the car and I jump in next to Lacey. But, instead of speaking, she gives me a wide-eyed look of horror and a small shake of her head. Too late, a terrible realisation begins to dawn.

‘Buckle up back there,’ calls Foster over her shoulder as she locks the doors and puts the car into gear. ‘Don’t want you getting hurt.’

‘Mum,’ whispers Lacey.

‘She said that if I called out to you before you got in the car, she’d shoot you.’

I’m about to whisper, ‘Where’s Rob?’, when she gives another head shake.

So, whatever Foster is up to, Lacey’s loaded look suggests Foster doesn’t know about Rob, and, as I didn’t mention him to her, she’s unaware Lacey had a companion.

As the car pulls away and gathers speed, I glance out of the back window and convince myself I see a nippy motorbike following at a discreet distance. Hopefully, he’s had the sense to ring the police (the ‘real’ police) and

Instead of speaking, she gives me a wide-eyed look of horror

explain that something looks off about Foster’s movements.

I exchange another look with Lacey, along the lines of, ‘We could just lean over, grab the wheel…’ but Foster reads my mind. ‘I wouldn’t,’ she says, cornering sharply. ‘You so much as twitch and Lacey pays the price. Understand?’

‘There’ll be evidence we were in this car,’ I croak.

‘It’s not registered to me, so won’t be traceable to me.’ She holds up the USB stick. ‘And now I’ve got this, I can destroy anything incriminating on it.’

‘What you don’t know is that there’s another,’ I improvise desperately. ‘Simon made a back-up copy.’

‘Back-up?’ she echoes uneasily, and I sense a slip in her composure.

‘Yeah, I saw another one hidden in the plant pot. I was just about to dig it out when you found me in there. You’ll have to go back and get it.’

This seems unlikely, even to my ears (why wouldn’t I have dug it out while she’d gone to get Lacey?), and I’m not certain how you’d go about backing up a computer stick, but Lacey adds, ‘He wouldn’t even need another stick. You save things to your desktop and then you save that to an external hard drive. Simon’s probably got one of those portable ones.’

Foster rolls her eyes, but she’s

definitely rattled. ‘One thing at a time,’ she murmurs, and swings past a dimly lit sign: Carmichael Crest: Phase One.

I know this place. It’s a new housing development a couple of miles from Simon’s house. Foster indicates timber frameworks covered in tarpaulins. ‘Currently just one big building site. A good place to bury secrets.’

Goosebumps of terror march

up my spine. I find Lacey’s hand and clutch it so tightly, we’re in danger of crushing

each other’s fingers. ‘I will get us out of this,’ I tell her with my eyes.

The car jolts and rattles over planks of wood bolted onto muddy walkways.

‘Welcome to the Tuscan Piazza,’ says Foster, stopping

on flattened mud. ‘Imagine sitting here on a summer’s evening with a glass of

Chablis, thinking how to get one over the neighbours.

Get out, both of you.’

I clamber out, hauling Lacey after me. I consider rushing Foster, but she’s a decade younger, clearly visits the gym and presumably has a concealed, licensed weapon.

She moves behind us and gestures with a dark shape produced from her tracksuit pocket. ‘Get moving.’

We press forward,

sidestepping a minefield of cement mixers, JCBs. Where is Security? Surely you can’t just waltz into a building site at night with all this equipment lying around? ‘Stop.’

Lacey and I peer up at the dark limbs of a half-built house. Something moves on the scaffolding girdling its upper level. My heart skips a beat and then I see it’s a

flapping tarpaulin. ‘There’s a ladder at the side, goes up to the scaffolding platform,’ Foster informs us. ‘Climb it.’

I’ve no choice but to obey, taking Lacey’s hand, our shoes slipping in mud.

Foster insists that I go first, then she follows Lacey. She knows Lacey is less likely to risk throwing an arm or leg to knock her off the ladder. She also knows that I’d dread Lacey doing that, in case of the retaliation. ‘Although,’ I think bitterly, ‘I think I know what sick outcome Foster is planning for us.’

The platform looks over a gaping trench at least

30-feet below.

‘Nothing so dramatic,’ says Foster, following my gaze. ‘I needed a high point so

I can signal the others.’ She produces a pocket torch, and I glance in surprise at the earpiece with its snazzy lead.

‘That’s just for show, to convince you I could call for back-up,’ she snorts, yanking it out. ‘Once the others arrive, they’ll escort you from here and make it look like a double suicide. Poor Lacey will kill herself after learning that you, Beth, killed not only Lambert, but her dad, too.’

I gape at her. ‘Why would I have killed John?’

‘Oh come on, Beth. Everyone at the station knew how insecure you were. The ink was barely dry on his divorce papers when he shacked up with you. And he always had an eye for the ladies at work, didn’t he?’

‘He was friendly, yes, but totally professional!’

Foster’s mouth twists into a cruel smile and she knows she’s hit a nerve. John was easy-going, popular – maybe a part of me had wondered if he’d shared Simon’s peccadilloes, seeing as they’d been such close friends... But no, not John. Never!

‘Earlier tonight,’ Foster goes on, ‘you killed Cosgrave when he confronted you with his growing belief that you’d set up the hit-and-run that killed John. Your suspicions of John having an affair will never be proven, of course. It will just be further proof of your

tendency to fly off the handle into murderous rages.’

‘So you’ve already killed Simon?’ I feel sick.

‘He won’t be found in time, put it that way. Even if he woke up, the only person he’d be

able to finger for the attack is the person who crept up behind him in the kitchen – his dinner guest.’

‘But he’d be able to reveal that he hadn’t confronted me about anything! And why would Simon be looking into John’s hit-and-run anyway?’

‘My word, you’re thick,’ snarls Foster. ‘He’s been like a dog with a bone over it on the QT – and other things.’

Even though I’m terrified and my head is spinning, I begin to make sense of what she’s telling me. ‘You had to kill Simon because…because you know who killed John! Or because…you’re involved!’

‘The penny drops,’ sneers Foster. ‘I didn’t kill your stupid husband personally. None of this was personal.’

‘Then what was it?’ I gasp. ‘He was my mentor when I joined the force, and let’s just say he took a keen

interest in my progress. That became a problem when I began to diversify.’ ‘Diversify?’

‘Enough chitchat,’ she barks suddenly, edging me and Lacey along the platform. I cling to the scaffolded edge and try to drive home my earlier point – that, should Simon survive, he’d be able to scupper Foster’s version of events.

‘Details,’ she says. ‘The prosecution would claim his memory was affected by the blow to his head. The way I see it, Jez Lambert was the driver you hired to kill John – you’d gone through police

files to find a low-ranking criminal to bribe – but, when he resurfaced recently, asking for more hush money, you had no choice but to kill him.

‘Overcome with horror at what you did tonight, and knowing there’s no way out after killing Simon, you confessed all to Lacey in a final phone call, telling her you’d decided to end it all.’

I listen in despair. It will all go down the way she’s described. Lacey and I will be ‘dealt with’, the ‘evidence’ consisting of the call I’ll apparently make to Lacey shortly before we both die.

Foster turns on the torch and flashes it in three quick bursts across Carmichael Crest.

After a few seconds, three answering flashes burst out of the night, away to the right.

‘So, what was the real deal with killing my husband, then Lambert, now Simon?’ I croak.

‘Never mind that. Turn arou-’ I rush her. I see no reason not to. ‘The others’ will be here within minutes.

We grapple and, for a second, I think I’ve wrestled the gun from her grasp. But I stumble, fall against the scaffolding rail and, when I scramble to my feet, she’s pointing the gun at Lacey.

‘Wait!’ I place myself squarely between Lacey and the gun as we hear footsteps approaching stealthily below. My heart quails. Foster smiles triumphantly. ‘Beth!’ a voice calls up, and I can hardly believe it.

It’s Rob! ‘Lacey!’ he hollers. ‘You both OK?’

Foster points the gun towards the ground, but it’s hard to pinpoint a dark shape moving about.

‘The police are on their way,’ he calls up, now addressing Foster. ‘If you’re expecting anyone to spirit you away, you might be disappointed. They’ll have seen the sirens heading this way and bailed. You’re on your own.’

Foster fires the gun.

‘Rob!’ I rush her again, this time knocking her off her feet. She drops the gun and I kick it away, towards the platform edge. Foster gropes around, but Lacey dashes forward and

I place myself squarely between Lacey and the gun as we hear footsteps approaching stealthily

stamps on her fingers, Foster giving a roar of pained surprise. As she reaches for Lacey’s ankle, Lacey swerves her and kicks the gun over the platform edge, into the trench. ‘No!’ screams Foster, lunging forward after it.

Acting on instinct, I seize her trailing leg and stop her toppling into the trench.

Seconds later, footsteps thud up the ladder and Rob grabs Foster, hauling her up and pinning back her arms. In the distance, to my relief, comes the sound of sirens. For a moment, I’d wondered if

Rob had been bluffing and had followed us on his bike,

hoping to be a have-a-go hero.

When the police arrive, I follow Rob down the ladder with Foster, and dash forward as soon as I recognise

Sergeant O’Callaghan. ‘Simon..?’

‘Ambulance on its way.’ As Foster’s led away, Rob explains how he found us. ‘I was in the gents at the pub, and when I came out I saw Lacey being dragged out by that woman. I decided to follow at a discreet distance.’

‘And I didn’t look at Rob when I saw him, hoping he’d get the gist and follow – and he did,’ Lacey says proudly.

‘I ran to Simon’s to get my bike, and got there just in time to see Foster shove you into a car already containing Lacey,’ Rob continues. ‘I gave chase, as they say. Discreetly. Foster’s car had a spoiler on the back I kept in my sights. I rang 999 as soon as I saw the car turning in here. I thought I’d better see where she was

heading first. Didn’t want to risk losing her.’

While we wait to hear about Simon, I pick my way between blue lights strobing over the ghostly building site, towards Charlotte Foster, now sitting in the back of a police car. She gives me a hard, defiant stare. I hold up the bag with the

USB stick inside, found in the glove box of her ‘untraceable’ car, and she turns away.

After we’ve been checked over in hospital, Lacey, Rob and I are allowed home. We’re still all over the place, and will be for ages. For a start, Lacey and I have to process the revelation that John’s death wasn’t some random accident, but orchestrated by Foster.

I still don’t know everything, because Foster’s colleagues still have to interview her, but I suspect Simon knows what’s been going on. He’s in Intensive Care, Sergeant O’Callaghan rings to tell me. He was hit over the head and was found afterwards in the boot of Foster’s car by Rob. He’s suffered a fractured skull, but, luckily, was found in time.

As soon as he’s well enough, I need answers.

‘Jez Lambert was a gobetween,’ Simon reveals, wincing as he sips his coffee (he’ll have headaches for years to come). He’s two weeks out of hospital, but still fragile, so I suggested he stay with me for a while.

‘Lambert was working for big-fish drug pushers, relaying messages to and from their contact in the police.’

‘Foster?’

‘She’s confessed everything. In exchange for a share of

their profits, she’d turn a blind eye to leads that might’ve got the pushers arrested, or she’d arrest anyone muscling in on their patches.’

‘And she killed John because he was onto her?’

‘Exactly. Foster had a lot of time for John, and let her guard down once, hinting that she’d found shortcuts that made the job more lucrative. John slapped her down and, soon after, she asked to be assigned another mentor. But he’d got suspicious, and she’d panicked and decided to silence him. Lambert feared he’d be equally expendable one day – he knew too much – so he told me everything.

‘I’d defended him on a few petty theft charges, and he trusted me. Initially, he didn’t trust anyone in the police, until I convinced him the bad apples were few and far between. Foster’s superiors were interested in taking her down, but needed proof. So Lambert asked to meet Foster to talk, claiming he wanted more cash. He was recording the meeting secretly. But when we got the wire back,

the sound quality wasn’t great – it wasn’t conclusive enough. In the meantime, Foster had sent a message to her drug contacts, warning that Lambert could no longer be trusted. Tragically for Lambert, they decided to take him out before police protection could kick in.

‘On the same night Foster was despatched to bump him off, you popped up, Beth. Foster followed you while you were following him.’

‘I did their dirty work for them!’ I exclaim, pacing the room in agitation. ‘So she needed the USB stick because it’s evidence of her having met Lambert?’

‘Yep. That way, every shred of evidence would be gone. Foster’s superiors agreed that I’d keep the stick, in case she had anyone else at police HQ in her back pocket.

‘She’s admitted that Lambert pleaded for his life by telling her about the stick, and that I had it, and was using it to build a case against her. Look – I’m sorry I didn’t tell you all this when you were in the frame for Lambert’s murder, but we couldn’t risk her getting wind of our plans. When Sheila overheard me talking to Lambert, he and I were both on burner phones.’

‘Sheila told you about having eavesdropped on you and Lambert?’

‘We’ve had a long-overdue talk – about everything.’

‘So you were waiting for Foster to overplay her hand,’ I realise. ‘Which she did, deciding to take out you, me and Lacey in one fell swoop.’

‘A reach too far,’ he nods.

What knocks me for six is how many lives have been blighted. John’s, Lambert’s, Simon’s, even Foster’s. She’d been a rising star – I’d felt envious of her – and she’d thrown it away out of greed.

‘Tell me honestly, Beth, how are you and Lacey coping, really?’

‘Good and bad days.’ It’s a clichéd answer, but it’s all

I have. ‘It’s especially tough for Lacey, having to relive John’s death all over again. But she’ll come through, I’ll see to that.’

‘I know you will.’ His smile tells me it’s time to reveal some latterday detective work of my own. ‘Look, Simon, did you have an affair with Lisa while you were going around in a foursome?’

His expression pales, speaking volumes. ‘I forgot you were excellent at police work, Beth.’

‘I wondered why you never gave up searching for John’s killer. Foster said you were like a dog with a bone. Even before Lambert fell into your lap, she must’ve worried you’d sniff her out. It was guilt, wasn’t it, that was behind your tenacity? You felt you’d let John down and wanted to make amends.’

He stares into his coffee. ‘Lisa and I always regretted it. It was over before it began.’

He doesn’t go into details and I don’t ask, though Sheila’s refrain pops into my head: career, cash and women, in that order.

‘I’m thinking of giving up my job,’ he murmurs. ‘Jumping before I’m pushed. My memory will never be the same again. It’s ironic, since Sheila was always on at me to ease back on work.’

‘There’ll be other things you can do, Simon.’

‘I’m going to travel,’ he says unexpectedly. ‘As soon as Foster’s trial is over, I’m off.’ He pauses. ‘I’ve no right to ask this, but might you still be here when I get back?’

He’s not asking if I’ll put my life on hold for him; he’s asking if he’ll have an anchor to return to.

I discover that I’m not averse to the idea. ‘The day after you get back,’ I tell him, ‘Dinner’s on you.’

the end Gabrielle Mullarkey, 2019