Steve steps in. “Does Amy know you’re here?”
Jeff shakes his head. “I’ll explain it all. Can you meet me in an hour? Somewhere private?” Jeff looks over at Tony. “No offense.”
“I never take offense,” says Tony. “Saved me a lot of time over the years.”
“Sure,” says Steve to Jeff. Amy likes Jeff, trusts him. So Steve does too. “That’ll give me time to get my clutch cable fixed.”
“And look at my bins,” says Tony.
“And look at Tony’s bins,” agrees Steve. “You might find the pace of things down here a bit slow, Jeff.”
“Suits me fine at the moment,” says Jeff. “There’s a campsite called Hollands Wood—do you know it?”
“Out by Brockenhurst, yeah, I know it,” says Steve.
“Meet me there in an hour,” says Jeff. “Pitch 46—it’s tucked away out of sight.”
“And Amy’s okay?” says Steve.
“Amy’s fine,” says Jeff. “That’s a promise. I’m just running out of people I can trust. So I’m turning to someone Amy trusts.”
“Doesn’t involve murders, does it?” says Steve.
“Hollands Wood in an hour?” says Jeff, without answering Steve’s question. “I’ll reveal all.”
“B3055, then A337,” says Tony, glad to be of some help.
19
“Nice house,” says Amy. Squatting in a bush for an hour is a good workout. Rosie is curled up, using a Louis Vuitton suitcase as a pillow.
“Too nice,” says Rosie.
“You don’t think cops should live in nice houses?” Amy asks.
“I don’t think they can afford to live in houses this nice,” says Rosie. “Not this nice. Criminals live on this street; cops live one street over.”
“Perhaps he won the lottery?”
Rosie had been all for heading straight up to Scroggie’s front door, giving it a rat-a-tat-tat and taking their chances. Amy understands that. By and large, people liked to talk to Rosie. If you found her at your front door, you’d invite her straight in. But Amy doesn’t always trust law-enforcement officers, so it pays to be careful. They can get information from Scroggie without talking to the man. Get any information that might help, then try to head back to London and the safety of Jeff Nolan by any means possible.
The key is to stay as low profile as possible for the next few days. If Loubet paid Kevin to kill Amy, he will presumably still want Amy dead. And they are hardly inconspicuous, as she had pointed out to Rosie. Rosie accepted this; she was, for instance, wearing a tiara. “Always dress to impress—it doesn’t matter where you are.”
If Scroggie was investigating the Fairbanks death, Amy knew she might find something to her advantage in his house. Cops bring files home. The only alternative was breaking into police headquarters and, while Rosie was game, Amy told her she had tried that before (“in Venezuela”) and advised against it.
In the time they’d been there, there had been no movement from the house. No noise, no lights, no deliveries. Amy looks at Rosie and nods.
“Okay, it’s empty, let’s go.”
Amy runs in a low crouch, while Rosie saunters along behind her. They skirt around the side, and then the back of the Scroggie home.
“Do you know how to pick loc—” Rosie’s question is interrupted by Amy taking a large rock and smashing one of Scroggie’s back windows.
“Ah, I see you do.”
Amy clears the remaining broken glass from the window frame and climbs inside. She then offers a hand to Rosie, who refuses it.
“I didn’t get where I am without being flexible,” Rosie says, squeezing herself onto Justin Scroggie’s kitchen worktop. “What are we looking for?”
“Computer or phone,” says Amy. “You check down here, and I’ll check upstairs.”
Amy takes the stairs three at a time. The house is very nice. Rosie had been right: too nice. Amy gets the feeling that whoever is paying Justin Scroggie, it isn’t just the Lowesport Police Department. She notices that Scroggie has a top-of-the-range Peloton bike, currently being used as a drying rack. Amy has never understood why people cycle indoors. It’s the same with boxing. Why punch bags when you can punch other people, and stop them from punching you back? People are so weird.
“Found it!” Rosie calls from downstairs, and Amy descends again. They are going to have to be quick. Who knows when Scroggie will be back? Amy isn’t worried about escaping—she can escape from anywhere—but she doesn’t want Scroggie to know she’s been there. Doesn’t want him to know that she’s investigating the Fairbanks murder. Her plan is simple. Find something that might make some sense of what’s happening, then escape unnoticed.
“Where was it?” Amy asks Rosie from the hallway.
“In here,” says Rosie, from a den off the hallway. Amy heads through the door, to see Rosie proudly pointing at a computer.
“Good work,” says Amy.
“Thanks,” says Rosie, then cocks her thumb over her shoulder. “I spotted it straight after I saw his dead body.”
Amy’s eyes follow Rosie’s thumb to the other side of the den, where the body of Sheriff Justin Scroggie is hanging by his bound hands from a ceiling joist. Amy looks back at Rosie.
“I’m a writer,” says Rosie. “I notice things.”
20
