The Ultimate Truth Read online

  For Eugenie – my friend, my belief.

  Contents

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  Look out for Book Two in the Travis Delaney Investigates Series

  1

  2

  3

  1

  I only noticed the man with the hidden camera because I couldn’t bear to look at the coffins any more. I’d been looking at them for a long time now. From the moment the two wooden boxes had been brought into the church, to the moment they’d been carried out into the graveyard and lowered gently into their freshly dug graves, I’d never taken my eyes off them. But now, as the vicar intoned his sombre words – ‘earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust’ – and I gazed down into the graves, the truth hit me again like a sledgehammer. My mum and dad were in those coffins.

  My mum and dad were dead.

  It was impossible to believe, impossible to imagine, and it hurt so much that I had to look away. As I slowly raised my head and wiped the tears from my eyes, I felt my nan’s hand on my arm. I looked at her. She was crying too, her kindly eyes brimming with tears. I squeezed her hand and smiled sadly at her, then turned to Grandad. He was staring straight ahead, his head held high, his craggy old face weighed down with sadness.

  The vicar was saying the Lord’s Prayer now – ‘forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us’ – and some of the other mourners were mumbling along with him. I gazed emptily around at them, vaguely recognising all the familiar faces, and that’s when I saw the man with the hidden camera.

  I didn’t know he had a hidden camera at first. I wasn’t even aware that I was looking at him at first. My mind was blank. I was just staring blindly, not really conscious of what I was seeing. It was only when the sun broke through the clouds for a moment, and a tiny glint of light flashed from one of his suit buttons, that I began to pay more attention to him.

  He was fairly tall, with short grey hair and steely grey eyes, and he was standing next to some old university friends of my parents. I knew he didn’t belong with them. They were all about the same age as my mum and dad – late thirties, early forties – but he was at least fifty, maybe a bit older. And while I knew all my mum and dad’s friends, just as I knew everyone else at the funeral, I’d never seen this man before. That wasn’t the only thing that set him apart. There was something else too, something about him that just didn’t feel right . . .

  Then his button caught the light again, glinting like a tiny bead of glass, and all of a sudden I knew what it was. I’d seen a button camera before. My dad had used one a couple of times. He’d shown it to me, he’d let me try it out. My dad had liked showing me how stuff works.

  My dad . . .

  My mum.

  The memory of them welled up inside me, filling my eyes with tears again, and for the next few minutes everything was just a blur.

  The service was over now, the prayers finished, the graveyard tranquil and quiet. A light summer rain had begun to fall, and people were starting to leave, shuffling awkwardly away from the graves and making their way back to their cars.

  Grandad put his hand on my shoulder.

  I wiped my eyes and looked at him.

  ‘Is there anything you want to say, Travis?’ he asked softly.

  I couldn’t think. My mind had gone blank. I gazed around, looking for the man with the steely grey eyes, but there was no sign of him anywhere.

  I stared down at the graves, the two coffins resting in the ground. There were so many things I wanted to say, but the words wouldn’t come to me. I closed my eyes, imagining the inscriptions on the gravestones:

  JACK DELANEY

  BELOVED SON, HUSBAND AND FATHER

  DIED 16 JULY 2013 AGED 38 YEARS

  REST IN PEACE

  ISABEL DELANEY

  BELOVED DAUGHTER, WIFE AND MOTHER

  DIED 16 JULY 2013 AGED 37 YEARS

  REST IN PEACE

  What else was there to say?

  I saw the man with the grey eyes again as we headed across the church car park towards Grandad’s car. He was standing next to a black BMW with tinted windows, talking on a mobile phone. By the time we reached Grandad’s car, the man had finished his phone call and was opening the boot of the BMW and taking out a coat. As Grandad searched through his pockets for his car keys, I took out my mobile, turned it on, and opened up the camera function. The man had put on his coat now and was reaching up to close the boot. As I held up my phone and zoomed in on him, I saw him glance over at me. He froze for a moment, his cold eyes staring out at me from the mobile screen, and I quickly took his picture. A second after the camera clicked, I thought I saw him nod his head at me.

  ‘What are you doing, Trav?’ I heard Grandad say.

  ‘Nothing,’ I muttered, putting my mobile away.

  Grandad looked across at the BMW, but there was nothing to see now. The man had got in the car and shut the door, his face indistinct behind the tinted glass. Grandad carried on staring at the BMW for a moment or two, a slight frown on his face, then he turned back to me.

  ‘Come on, son,’ he said, opening the back door of his car. ‘Let’s go home.’

  2

  My mum and dad ran a small private investigation business called Delaney & Co. Grandad had set up the agency on his own in 1994, and Mum and Dad had started working for him two years later, straight after leaving university. Grandad retired from the business about ten years ago, and since then my parents had run the agency together. Most of the work they did wasn’t all that glamorous or exciting – fraudulent insurance claims, corporate security, tracing witnesses and debtors – and although they sometimes got involved with the shadowy side of life, I’d never been particularly worried about their safety. They were very good at their job. They knew what they were doing. They didn’t take unnecessary risks. So it had never really occurred to me that one day they might not come home. They were my mum and dad, they always came home.

  But two weeks ago, on Tuesday 16 July, they didn’t.

  I’ll never forget that day.

  It was the day the world stopped turning.

  I’d got home from school at the usual time, around half past four, and after I’d changed out of my uniform and had something to eat, Mum and Dad had told me they were driving down to London that night and they wouldn’t be back until tomorrow.

  ‘Sorry, Trav,’ Mum had said, glancing at her watch. ‘I know it’s all a bit sudden, but something’s just come up, something really important, and we have to get to London as soon as possible. You’ll have to stay with Nan and Grandad tonight.’

  ‘But it’s Tuesday,’ I said. ‘It’s my boxing night.’

  ‘You can still go to the club,’ Dad said. ‘Grandad will take you.’


  ‘He doesn’t like boxing,’ I said. ‘He thinks it’s for sissies.’

  Dad smiled. ‘Go and get your stuff ready, OK? We have to get going in a minute. We’ll drop you off at Nan and Grandad’s on the way.’

  It’s funny how your memory works. I know I must have gone upstairs to my bedroom and thrown a few things into my rucksack – toothbrush, pyjamas, boxing gloves, shorts – but I have no recollection of actually doing it. What I can remember is that when I came downstairs and went outside to put my rucksack in the car, Mum and Dad were standing in the driveway having an argument. They weren’t shouting at each other or anything. They never did that. In fact, it wasn’t even an argument really, just a minor disagreement. Mum wanted to take her car to London, and Dad wanted to go in his. Mum’s car was an automatic, a Volvo, and more comfortable than Dad’s old Saab. But Mum’s car was parked in the garage, and Dad’s was in the driveway. So if they went in Mum’s Volvo, Dad would have to reverse the Saab out of the way, wait for Mum to back the Volvo out of the garage, then drive the Saab back in again.

  ‘It’s just a waste of time,’ he said.

  Mum shook her head. ‘I’m not driving all the way to London in that heap of yours.’

  ‘It might be a heap,’ Dad replied, ‘but at least it’s a sensible colour.’

  Mum’s car was bright yellow, her favourite colour, and Dad was forever teasing her about how ridiculous it looked.

  ‘I’ll be doing the driving anyway,’ Dad said. ‘All you have to do is sit there and look out of the window.’

  ‘The passenger seat gives me backache.’

  ‘It’s not far. We’ll be there in a couple of hours.’

  ‘I don’t want to spend all night in London with an aching back.’

  Dad sighed. ‘All right, we’ll go in yours.’

  After he’d moved his car, and Mum had driven hers out, and Dad had reversed his into the garage, they’d had another disagreement. This time it was about Dad’s sat nav. Dad had no sense of direction at all, and he always used a sat nav when he was driving, even for local journeys. But Mum hated them, and she never used one wherever she was going. So when Mum saw that Dad was bringing his sat nav with him, she told him to put it back.

  ‘I’m not having that thing in my car,’ she said firmly.

  ‘We’re driving into the middle of London,’ Dad said. ‘You know what the roads are like—’

  ‘I don’t care,’ Mum told him. ‘I’d rather get lost than use one of those.’

  ‘But I’ve already keyed in the address,’ he said. ‘All we have to do when we get to London is turn it on—’

  ‘No,’ Mum said.

  Dad looked at her, about to say something else, but when he saw the expression on her face, he changed his mind. He sighed again, turned round, and took his sat nav back to the garage.

  The garage is only just big enough for a car, and Dad was over six feet tall, so rather than shuffling his way into the garage to put the sat nav back in the car, he just dropped it into a cardboard box full of odds and ends that was sitting on a shelf inside the door.

  And that was it really.

  There was nothing to it. By the time we’d all got in Mum’s car and were driving off down our street, the whole thing had been forgotten. Mum was smiling and joking about something, Dad was fiddling with the car radio, singing along to some pathetic old pop song, and I was just sitting in the back seat looking forward to my regular Tuesday-night trip to the boxing club.

  I remember it all quite vividly.

  After that, my memory goes blank again. I can’t remember anything between the time we left the house and the moment Grandad’s mobile rang. I can’t remember what Mum and Dad said to me when they dropped me off at Nan and Grandad’s house. I can’t remember what I said to them. I can’t remember anything between five o’clock, when I left the house with Mum and Dad, and five to seven, when Grandad’s mobile rang just as he was pulling his car into a parking space outside the boxing club.

  He turned off the engine, I remember, then took out his phone, glanced at the screen, and answered the call.

  ‘Nancy?’ he said into the phone. Nancy is my nan’s name. ‘Nancy,’ he said urgently, ‘what’s the matter?’

  Then his face went pale.

  Mum and Dad’s car had come off the road and crashed into a tree about ten kilometres from Barton. The accident happened on a slip road just off the A12. Dad was killed instantly, Mum died on the way to the hospital. According to the police, the car was travelling at approximately 65 mph when it veered suddenly to the left, went into a 180-degree spin, then flipped up into the air and flew off the verge into an oak tree. Driving conditions were good, the car was mechanically sound, and no other vehicles were involved.

  3

  The two weeks between the car crash and the funeral were the longest two weeks of my life. The days passed by in a haze of confusion and emptiness. I didn’t understand anything. I didn’t know what to do, what to think, what to feel. At first I simply couldn’t believe that Mum and Dad were dead. I couldn’t comprehend it. How could they be dead? They were my mum and dad . . . they couldn’t be dead. I kept thinking that it had to be some kind of huge mistake. It wasn’t my mum’s car that had crashed, it was someone else’s car . . . the same make as Mum’s, the same model, the same colour. The people who’d died in the crash weren’t Mum and Dad, they were two other people, a man and a woman who looked just like Mum and Dad . . .

  But I knew I was just kidding myself.

  It wasn’t a mistake.

  Grandad had identified the bodies.

  I was living at Nan and Grandad’s house now. I’d gone a bit crazy the day after the car crash, insisting that I wanted to go home, I wanted to go back to my house, I wanted to be there in case Mum and Dad came back. It was hard for Nan and Grandad, of course. They couldn’t let me go home on my own. I was thirteen years old, my parents had just died. They had to look after me. I knew that. I knew I was acting irrationally and making everything really awkward for them, but I couldn’t help it. My craziness didn’t last very long though, and once I’d calmed down and apologised, we all just tried to get on with things as best as we could.

  Grandad made a trip back to my house to pick up some of my stuff – clothes, my bike, my laptop, a few other bits and pieces – and although I really missed my own house, my own room, I’d spent so much time at Nan and Grandad’s over the years that it kind of felt like my second home anyway. Their house wasn’t far from ours. We live – or we used to live – in a place called Kell Cross, a village on the outskirts of Barton, and Nan and Grandad live about two kilometres away on Long Barton Road, the main road between Kell Cross and Barton.

  Their house was a nice old place, and I’d always felt really comfortable there. There were three bedrooms upstairs. One was Nan and Grandad’s, one was the room I always stayed in, and the third one was Granny Nora’s room. She’s my great-grandmother, Grandad’s mum. She’s eighty-six now, and she doesn’t get out much any more. She has chronic arthritis, bad legs, bad hips. On good days she can just about walk with the aid of a stick, but when her arthritis is really bad she can only get about in a wheelchair. She’s deaf in one ear too, and the other ear’s getting worse all the time. Her mind though – and her attitude – is as sharp as a pin.

  I spent a lot of time thinking about things during those endless two weeks. There wasn’t much else to do. I didn’t want to go anywhere or talk to anyone – friends, kids from school – I didn’t want to do anything. What was the point? So I just kind of hung around most of the time. In my room, in the sitting room downstairs, sometimes out in the garden.

  I don’t think I meant to start asking myself questions about the car crash. It was just that I had nothing else to do, and the only other questions in my mind were too heartbreaking. Why did my mum and dad have to die? Why them? They were the best people in the world. Why did they have to die?

  There were no answers to those questions.
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br />   So I found myself asking others.

  How did the crash happen? If there were no other vehicles involved, and driving conditions were fine, and there was nothing wrong with the car, why had it come off the road? Mum and Dad were excellent drivers. Because of their investigation work, they’d taken an advanced driving course, and they were very proud of their driving skills. They drove carefully, not too fast, not too slow. They didn’t use their phones when they were driving. They didn’t take risks. So what had happened? Why had Mum lost control of the car at 65 mph and careered off the road into a tree?

  It didn’t make sense.

  I also couldn’t understand why they were only ten kilometres from Barton when they crashed. They’d left the house at around five o’clock, and according to the police, the crash had occurred just over an hour later, at five past six. It doesn’t take an hour to drive ten kilometres. So where had they been? And why hadn’t they driven directly to London?

  Again, I couldn’t think of an answer.

  Another thing I couldn’t work out was that if they were driving to London, why would they take a slip road off the A12? The A12 is the direct route from Barton to London. Unless you’re going somewhere else, you don’t need to turn off it.

  Questions . . .

  I couldn’t stop asking them.

  Over and over and over again.

  Even though I knew the answers didn’t matter.

  Whatever the answers were, Mum and Dad were never coming home.

  4

  Everything felt really strange after the funeral. It was as if we’d been waiting for ever for the day to come, and now that it had, and the funeral was over, there was nothing left to wait for. There was just nothing left. The whole world felt empty and dull.

  I was still troubled by the unanswered questions about the car crash, and since the day of the funeral I hadn’t been able to get the man with the hidden camera out of my mind either. Who was he? Why was he secretly filming my parents’ funeral? Normally I would have gone to Grandad and asked him about it, and normally he would have welcomed me and done his best to help. He probably would have come up with some answers too.