The Valley by The Valley (epub)

Author:The Valley (epub)
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: urn|ean|9781784627409
Publisher: Matador
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 19

I did not sleep that night; nor the one afterwards; nor the one after that. The moment my eyes closed, I was back on board the Glen Avon, watching Gerry being murdered. In the mornings, I dragged myself into work, but spent most of my time alone in my office behind a closed door, searching the internet for reports about the disappearance of an Irish financier called Gerry. I started with bbc.co.uk, but when it carried no relevant stories, I expanded my search to the online editions of all the national newspapers, then all the Irish ones, then all the South Coast regional ones, and finally all the financial websites. I became a devoted follower of the ITN South of England correspondent’s Twitter feed and a Facebook friend of the BBC South Today programme. Returning to my flat late at night, I watched the rolling 24 hour news service into the small hours, waiting for the news to break.

But it never did. And as the news vacuum continued, I grew more frightened: rich yacht owners did not just vanish into thin air without anyone noticing. If nothing was being reported, it had to be the result of a temporary news blackout, and that would mean the police were closing in on their suspects.

Lying in my bed, unable to sleep, I would think about all the evidence I had left behind. Surveillance cameras inside the marina must have filmed Gerry and me strolling along the quayside; witnesses would have seen us together in the coffee shop; two taxi drivers had taken me across the Isle of Wight and then from the hydrofoil to the marina. I had also used my credit card to pay for the rental car, which had a SatNav inside. From its data, the police could track not only my journey down to Southampton but also my visit to the cottage, and if they retraced it, they would find a perfect prosecution witness, in the form of Jane, a fellow police officer. It was easy to imagine the pleasure she would take in recounting how I had turned up at the cottage on the day that Gerry disappeared: late, panicky, smelling of smoke, and evasive about where I had been. And her smile would grow even broader if she was asked whether she had ever seen me lose my temper and turn violent, and she could reveal how I had thrown a coffee cup against the wall.

In the mornings I would arrive at PropFace already exhausted, and scurry to my desk where the cycle would begin all over again. Jittery and bad tempered, I avoided people and cancelled meetings, just when PropFace needed my attention. The economy was still in the doldrums, the main home buying season was over for another year and our rapid expansion had left us exposed. Decisions had to be taken but I kept to myself, endlessly searching the internet. And the less I found, the more frightened I became. Eventually, my fear

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