He was going to help us; suddenly I wanted to throw my arms around his neck and hug him. He powered up the tablet and returned to the mangled metal of Grace’s car. Instead of pushing himself underneath it, he squeezed into what was left of the driver’s seat, fiddled around for a moment then connected the tablet to a slot in the car’s dashboard.
I held my breath and crossed my fingers.Please work, I prayed.Please, please work.
The seconds ticked into minutes and Alfie grunted several times, his breath misting the shattered windscreen. Finally he smacked his lips in satisfaction and eased himself out. ‘I’ve got an address for you, close to Borehamwood. That’s six, maybe seven miles from here.’ He tapped the screen of the tablet decisively. ‘That’s where your friends went. It’s the last place logged in the satnav.’
I massaged the back of my neck. Borehamwood hadn’t come up in any of the searches I’d done and I couldn’t think of a reference to it in Quincy Carmichael’s file – and I couldn’t go back and check because the damned file had been burnt to ash along with the rest of Supe Squad. I damned Tony in my head for not being more diligent, then instantly felt guilty. Tony was dead, after all.
‘Thank you, Alfie,’ I said. ‘I really appreciate your help.’ I stuck my hand out to shake his.
He eyed it and stepped back. ‘No offence, like, but if you’re really a murderer I’m not touching your hand.’
I wondered why he’d helped us if he thought that. ‘I’m not a murderer. And even if I were, criminal intent isn’t contagious.’
‘Call it suspicion then.’ He shoved his hands into his pockets and grinned cheerfully. ‘If anyone asks, I’m going to tell them you threatened me.’
I couldn’t disagree since it was the truth. Buffy growled but I simply nodded. ‘Thank you,’ I said, meaning it. ‘Somebody did try to kill our friends, and we’re going to find out who.’
Alfie glanced us over once more. ‘I wouldn’t want to be them when you catch up to them,’ he said.
I gave him a small humourless smile. Amen to that.
ChapterSeventeen
Ioffered Buffy a lift in the back of Tallulah but she recoiled as if I’d suggested that she hand over her firstborn. She told me that she wouldn’t go near the purple monstrosity ever again, and she’d certainly never get inside it. I guessed I’d finally found the two things that scared Buffy: losing someone she cared about and my battered purple Mini.
She got into her bubble-gum pink Smart car, complete with eyelashes fringing its headlights, and followed us at a distance. While I drove and mumbled to Tallulah to ignore the werewolf, Lukas called the hospital. ‘No change,’ he reported when he hung up. ‘Not in Grace or Fred.’
Pain stabbed at my heart, although I knew that a stable condition was the best we could hope for right now. I remained silent for the rest of the journey. At least Lukas was with me now; at least I wasn’t alone.
The location that Alfie had given us wasn’t in the town of Borehamwood, it was off a side lane a mile or so from the main road. The lane was narrow, with high hedges on either side that seemed to close in on Tallulah. We might be out of the city and in the countryside, but all I felt was stifling claustrophobia. Even Lukas seemed relieved when we drove onto a wider road that took us to a cottage. I pulled to a halt, ignoring the small muddy driveway in front of the building in favour of parking on the road. The place looked abandoned.
Buffy’s ridiculous car stopped behind us. She lowered her window and yelled, ‘Go park in front of the house! There’s enough space there for both of us!’
Lukas looked at me and I shook my head. ‘No,’ I said. I pointed to the driveway. ‘There are tread marks there that might tell us something.’
He followed my gaze and his expression cleared when he saw them too. He unfolded his tall frame and got out of Tallulah, and I gave her steering wheel a brief caress before heading after him.
A moment later, Buffy joined us. ‘I said that you should park on the driveway in front of the house!’
I ignored her and stepped around the worst of the mud, taking care not to disturb any of the marks in the squidgy earth. ‘There’s only one set of tyre marks,’ I muttered as I examined the ground.
‘Yes,’ Lukas said, ‘but there are three sets of footprints.’
My body tensed. Buffy stopped glaring at me and immediately jogged to Lukas’s side. All of three of us stared down. I’d almost missed the footprints. Lukas had keen eyes.
The tyre marks from Grace’s car were obvious, then two sets of footprints led both to and from where a car must have parked – undoubtedly Grace’s and Fred’s. But there were other prints that led from the tarmacked road where we’d parked.
I stared at the third set, which seemed to circle around the heavier tyre marks. They weren’t clear enough to get a full print, and there would be no point calling in someone to take a cast in order to match them to a set of shoes, but whoever had made them had stopped at several points around the car.
‘Somebody followed them here,’ Buffy growled. ‘Then when they were inside the cottage having a look around, they sneaked up and loosened the wheel nuts.’
Grace wouldn’t have gone inside the cottage – he’d have needed a warrant to do that and he was a by-the-book kind of guy – but otherwise, I had to agree with her.
‘Once they’d loosened them,’ I said, ‘they could have driven away and waited around a corner until Fred and Grace drove back down the lane. The perp could have followed them to make sure the plan worked and they crashed.’
I wondered what would have happened if the car hadn’t lost its wheel when it was driving down a hill at speed. Fred and Grace were in a bad way but at least they were both still breathing. For now. Would the bastard who did this have done something even worse if Plan A hadn’t worked? I shivered and dismissed the thought; it was almost too much to bear thinking about.
Lukas squeezed my hand briefly in reassurance then walked up the short driveway to the front door. Ivy was crawling up it and there was a faded, hand-painted sign haphazardly nailed next to it. ‘The Love Nest,’ he read aloud.
