The Ultimate Truth Read Online Free PDF Page A

pot that should have been on the table
was lying on the floor, the soil scattered all over the place, the plant itself stomped into the carpet.
    I went over to the window, stood there for a moment, then crouched down and pulled back the carpet from the corner. I paused again, listening to the murmur of Courtney’s voice, then I
reached down and pulled up a hinged section of floorboard. As I’d hoped, the hidden safe beneath the floorboards hadn’t been touched. It was still locked, still safe. I stared at it,
remembering the day I’d come across Dad opening it up.
    ‘There’s nothing exciting in it,’ he’d said, smiling at me. ‘It’s just boring old business papers – insurance documents, contracts, stuff like
that.’ He grinned. ‘I told Mum it was a waste of money, but you know what she’s like. Always worrying about something.’ He winked at me. ‘Don’t tell her I said
that.’
    I wasn’t sure I’d believed him at the time, and I’d always wondered what was really in the safe. But although I knew the code – I’d seen Dad keying it in –
I’d never actually looked inside. I’d been tempted a couple of times, but it just hadn’t felt like the right thing to do. Even now, as I leaned down and began entering the code,
it still didn’t feel quite right.
    But that didn’t stop me.
    The four-digit code was the date of my birthday: 3008.
    When I punched in the code, the lock beeped and a green light came on. I took hold of the handle, turned it, and pulled. The steel door opened easily. There wasn’t much in there – a
couple of cardboard files, some A4 envelopes, a handful of papers. I reached in and pulled everything out, then sat down on the floor and began leafing through it all.
    It didn’t take me long to realise that Dad had been telling the truth about the boring old business papers. The files were crammed with invoices and contracts, the envelopes were stuffed
full of insurance papers. There didn’t seem to be any case notes. No clues, no secrets. It wasn’t until I’d almost reached the bottom of the pile, and almost given up hope, that I
came across the photograph.
    It wasn’t an original, just a computer printout on plain A4 paper. The picture quality wasn’t very good either. It looked as if it had been printed off in a hurry. But there was
still no mistaking what the photograph showed.
    I put the rest of the papers to one side, breathed out slowly, and took a closer look at the picture.
    It showed three men standing together outside a building. They were all wearing suits, and it looked as if they were discussing something. One of them had short dark hair and a goatee beard,
another one had a shaved head, and the third one was the man from the funeral. There was absolutely no doubt in my mind it was him. He had the grey eyes, the short grey hair, and – Courtney
had been right – he did have that ex-military look to him. There were two vehicles parked behind the three men – a black BMW and a black Mercedes van. The registration plates
weren’t visible. The building in the background was some kind of industrial warehouse. It didn’t look as if it was in use, but it didn’t look abandoned either. Grey brick walls,
blinds in the windows, solid-looking doors. Locked double gates led into a small car park at the front of the warehouse, and the whole place was enclosed behind a high wire-mesh fence.
    The time and date was printed in the bottom right-hand corner of the photograph:
    16:08 15/07/13
    Eight minutes past four, 15 July.
    The day before Mum and Dad died.
    I sat there studying the picture, trying to work out what it meant. I was fairly sure that either Mum or Dad had taken it – why else would it be in their office safe? – and I was
equally sure that it was a surveillance photograph. And that had to mean that the grey-eyed man had something to do with a case that Mum and Dad were investigating.
    I looked down at the pile of business papers on the