Chapter 6: The Storage Unit
The facility was on the edge of town, behind a petrol station, the kind of place designed to be easy to find and easy to forget.
A long row of orange doors.
Padlocks.
A keypad at the gate.
We didn't have the code.
Nick called Robert from the car park.
Robert answered on the second ring.
"Do you know anything about a storage unit?" Nick asked.
"In Millfield.
In your mother's name or possibly someone else's."
A pause.
"Nick," Robert said carefully, "why are you asking me that?"
"Because her name is on a list we found.
And so is Claire's mother."
Another pause.
Longer this time.
"Pull up outside and wait," Robert said.
"I'm twenty minutes away."
He arrived in nineteen.
He parked beside us and got out of the car and stood in the morning light looking older than he had the night before.
"I should have told you this yesterday," he said.
"I was going to.
Then everything happened and I thought — I thought there would be more time."
"Tell us now," Nick said.
Robert looked at me.
"Your mother came to me," he said.
"About seven years ago.
Just before she got sick."
I felt the ground shift slightly under me.
"She had found something," Robert continued.
"At the property firm where she worked.
A transaction.
A piece of land that had been sold twice — once legitimately, and once through a shell company that didn't exist.
The money from the second sale went somewhere it shouldn't have."
"Where?" Nick asked.
"To Martha," Robert said.
"Through an intermediary.
A man whose initial is D.
His name is Dennis Hale.
He's a solicitor.
He handled the paperwork."
I thought about the note.
*Confirm D.
has original.
If D.
talks, use it.*
"My mother found evidence of fraud," I said.
"Yes," Robert said.
"She brought it to me because she didn't know who else to trust.
She knew Martha had always disliked you.
She was worried about what Martha might do if she found out your mother knew."
"What did you do with it?" Nick asked.
"We put it here," Robert said.
He held up a key.
Small.
Silver.
A number stamped into the head of it.
"Your mother kept a copy at home.
I kept the originals here, in my name, so Martha couldn't find them."
"Martha found out anyway," I said.
"Yes.
I don't know how.
But she found out your mother had been to see me.
That's when things changed.
That's when she started pushing harder to keep Nick away from me." He looked at his son.
"It wasn't only about protecting you from me.
It was about making sure I couldn't tell you what I knew."
Nick took the key from his father's hand.
The orange door rolled up.
Inside, on a metal shelf, was a cardboard box.
Sealed with tape.
My mother's handwriting on the side.
*For Claire.
When the time is right.*
My throat closed.
Nick put his arm around me and I let him hold me there for a moment, in front of that box, in that small cold room that smelled of dust and time.
Then I reached out and picked it up.
May you like
It was lighter than I expected.
And heavier than anything I had ever carried.
