by Adam Melrose
Chapter 53
They collected the Audi on the way down the road, and it wasn’t long before they were rolling up to the front door of the manor house. It was eerie, everyone had scarpered, even the butler. Matt, Ava, Bruno, Joe, Max and Bella were far too traumatised by the last couple of hours to care. Bruno managed to persuade the hotel to bring everyone fresh clothes, and to deliver some pizzas, which everyone picked at. It would have felt ghoulish to eat any of Eva’s food. Bruno found the fridge full of food, bought with the expectation of being eaten, now sitting there redundant a little eerie. It was little practical everyday things that seemed to bring a death home in a brutally real manner. That loss of the normal stuff that had been planned for, and now would not happen, like eating.
Stimpson headed in and out of the house a few times. He was rifling through Evo’s – Eva’s office for various things, and the team helped where they could. He had found a set of diaries of Eva’s going back twenty years. They would need to be studied in detail, but even a cursory glance showed a mania, that going unchecked over the years had developed into a full-on delusion. She had become more and more convinced the world was going to meet a cultural Armageddon, which seemed to be the reason for her labelling The Portal with underworld mythology; and that had led Eva on her increasingly delusionary path. Stimpson’s mention of the study caused Bella to sit up and announce loudly.
‘Oh no… the bloody chair. What an idiot I’ve been. There was a clue right there at the start, and I missed it. I’m sorry.’
Stimpson looked at Bella, ‘What chair?’
‘The one in Evo’s office. When he took me in there on the evening we came to his dinner party, he sat me down, then he sat down in his own chair and lowered it. Being self-obsessed about myself and my husband, and being under the spell of Evo’s charm; I assumed he lowered the chair to be courteous and not lean over me but…’
No one interrupted her sentence, so Bella continued it herself after a moment.
‘But… he would have to lower the seat if someone much shorter had been sitting in the chair before. What would be comfortable for a woman of five foot or so, would not be for a man that was easily six foot. – What an idiot. I could have spared us all this heartache if I had been on the ball. The chair was set wrong because it wasn’t his office.’
Stimpson shook his head in a matter-of-fact manner, ‘You shouldn’t feel bad Mrs Stone. I have training for that sort of thing, and I am not sure if I had been in your position, that I would have given such a thing any consideration either. Don’t beat yourself up about it.’
Bella pursed her lips and gave a nod.
On the way out, Stimpson explained to Matt that it looked like Eva had been the one to activate the Shadow Tide machine with Joe and Max in it. ‘I wouldn’t lose too much sleep over her death mate, if I were you. Looking at her computer, it looks like she and Norton had decided to frame Evo and send you off in that direction. It looks like he genuinely didn’t have a clue he was being framed. I suspect he didn’t know about the deaths.’
In-between these visits, the team slowly began to face up to the initial trauma and shock of what Norton’s betrayal meant to them. The consensus was that their biggest hurdle in dealing with the betrayal was that not only was the here-and-now wrong and a lie; but that every conversation and action with him over the last couple of years was also a lie. Not only was he not who they thought he was, they no longer felt they were who they thought they were. How had they missed the fact he was clearly a psychopath? This conversation would kick in and out throughout the night in the small chunks that they could manage, before the pain became too great, and they had to change the subject; or getup and continue to lockdown the manor, room by room. Window latches were shut firm, shutters were pulled to, curtains were drawn, power sockets where turned off, and doors were firmly closed and locked; the keys of the secured rooms then added to the growing bunch. Nalebury Park was no longer anyone’s home.
At times, they briefly talked about how they were struggling not only with Norton killing Evo; but also Eva and then himself. It was on one of Stimpson’s visits back to the house that he pointed out that whilst he didn’t know about Evo; Norton and Eva clearly had a suicide pact.
Max looked surprised, ‘A suicide pact. Who said that?’
‘No one said, that’s kind of the point.’
‘You’ve lost me.’
‘Well neither Eva nor Norton made any sound as they fell. They would have screamed or yelled if they had wanted to live; in my experience anyway. Their silence as they fell to their deaths speaks volumes.’ Then he was gone again, back to the portal.
It was agreed with Bella that she would return to the hotel, pack and head home that night. The goodbyes were pretty emotional. Her adventure was at an end. She had spent nearly two years fighting the system, and against all the odds; she had won with help from these great and decent people. She hoped that now their professional relationship was over forever; it would be replaced with one of personal friendship. They would certainly come to Pete’s wake and send-off along with Pete’s friends from the hotel; she knew that much for sure. She must get on with planning that. She relished the thought of getting back to the normal mundane day to day of life.
Now that there was no longer any need to fight, Bella’s body let go, and as she sat in the back of the taxi heading down the M4 towards her beloved London; the exhaustion began to consume her. She knew her husband’s killer would never stand trial, but she felt a certain justice had been served. It was a justice she could live with. She would speak to the coroner’s office as Matt suggested. For now though; Bella just wanted to get back home to her bed, the bed that she and Pete spent happy nights together in. She would cuddle up to his memory; right now she felt she could sleep for a month.
Chapter 54
In the morning, the team had handed the manor over to a fresh squad of police officers, then packed up at the hotel and said their goodbyes.
It had been a unanimous agreement to return to the portal for one last visit before they left the area. To say goodbye to the place that had changed their lives forever; not only their future and how they would see the world from now on; but as they had acknowledged last night, it had also changed what had gone before, thanks to Norton’s Betrayal. These were emotional scars that had been inflicted, and would be carried indefinitely by each of them. It really was not an exaggeration to say that life would never quite be the same again.
They got out of the cars and wandered over to the top of the stone balustrade where the staircase descended down to the portal. The grass on the edge of the stairs was all flat where vehicles had come up and down, collecting bodies and anything else the police had decided needed to be removed without delay. Several lengths of police tape were tied across the two posts that marked the start of the stairs. The tape was sagging, the slack allowing it to move about gently in the breeze.
Bruno walked along to the balustrade and peered over, his hands resting on the stone. Below he could see a couple of police officers looking back up at him. Bruno recognised them as two of the officers from last night. He gave a clear thumbs up to which both officers responded in kind.
‘We have just come to say goodbye to the place,’ Bruno shouted down to the officers, ‘All the best to you.’
‘And to you,’ came the shouted reply in stereo.
Bruno walked back to join the others.
Ava put her hand on the police tape to stop it moving. ‘So many people tell you that the past cannot be changed, but it can; it has been here.’
No one said anything out loud. They were thinking about what Ava had just said. She was right. The past could be changed, Norton had proved it. Ava gripped the tape tightly in her hands.
Matt gave consideration to what Ava had just said.
‘You’re right. Norton has ripped the rug right from underneath us. In a heartbeat he has shown that an aspect of our life was not what we thought it was, and the logical thought is
to question whether that is true of the rest of our world; but we have to hold strong and have faith. There are not really any words to fully describe what he has done, but we cannot let him destroy us. We are strong together, we are not like him, we are family, and we have each other’s backs. The best way we can beat this and him is to have faith in each other. If we begin to doubt each other, Norton wins.’
Silence fidgeted amongst the team for a few moments before Matt concluded sharing his thoughts.
‘Evo did tell us when we met him this was just a tunnel. He was right. It’s just a building. It’s all very clinical in the cold light of day. It was the people in this case that we had to be wary of, not the buildings.’
Ava had drifted off on a thought of her own. So, Evo was a construct… he was her construct – Eva’s. Rest in peace Christopher whoever you are. She felt a sudden pang of sadness for a man who did not get to live his own life, had been lied to, then robbed of his existence. Her hand was in her pocket when her phone started to vibrate, which made her jump.
Pulling the phone out of her pocket and looking at it, Ava decided she would not answer it unless it looked important. The caller ID read DCI Stimpson. Ava took the call.
Ava walked away whilst answering the phone. Beyond her saying ‘Hello.’ The team could hear no more of the conversation. It was indeed DCI Edward Stimpson. Gone was the amiable tone from yesterday that Ava had come to associate with this now recognisable voice. Was that a very real panic she could detect in his voice? Ava was growing more unsettled as a panicked Stimpson almost yelled his information down the phone to her.
Matt had come to a decision. ‘I think we have all earned a long weekend starting now, there is nothing in the diary for us work-wise for the next few days.’
Everyone nodded.
‘Damn right,’ said Bruno.
Matt was interrupted by Ava’s return, and they all clocked the change in her demeanour.
‘We actually need to leave…. now.’
‘That was DCI Stimpson on the phone. He called us as a potential client this time. His sister has just been found dead at the foot of a waterfall called Boar’s Cascade in the Forest of Dean.’
Ava paused for a breath.
‘From what I could glean from that call, the investigation team and several eye witnesses are saying suicide; but Stimpson says that something his sister confided to him yesterday means he knows for a fact it can’t be. Stimpson has little time before being removed from the crime scene because of the obvious family conflict. He is there now waiting for us.’
They turned and walked back towards the cars. If they took this new case, it meant the long weekend off was going to have to wait. They wouldn’t be that far away if the police on the de Varley case needed to talk to them, and to be honest, they could all do with the distraction of a new case whilst they continued to process everything in relation to Norton Graey; their friend… their enemy.
A note from the author
Dear Reader,
The Determined Widow is the first in a series of books that follow the exploits of Matthew Holland and his team. Each book will be a complete standalone case.
I am working on the team’s next book now, and it is due for release in 2022.
If you would like to receive notification when the next book in this series becomes available, you can keep an eye on Amazon or you can leave your email with me at www.adammelrose.org and I will send you an email around the launch date.
I will treat your email address with the same level of care and protection I would expect my own email address to be dealt with. It will only be used to inform you when the next book is available to purchase.
In the meantime, I would like to offer you a genuine thank you for purchasing and reading my first novel. If you enjoyed it, I would love to hear your thoughts. You can reach me via the above website. I know there is a world of choice out there, and I am genuinely grateful you chose to give my debut novel a shot. (Pun intended… well I am a thriller writer, I had to!)
Seriously though, thank you!
Adam Melrose
Acknowledgements
I would like to begin by thanking my parents John and Jane and my superb junior school for introducing me to great books, stories and imagination from an early age.
I would also like to thank everyone who has supported me in the creation of this novel and for encouraging me to give it a go. Thanks to Alex for all the support, initial editing suggestions and for being a great sounding-board.
Thank you to my praise-shy editor for helping me get my word count down from 120,000 words to just over 95,000 and for all your guidance and understanding that I wanted to write a slow-burning thriller. Something that many think has no place in modern times.
I would also very much like to thank those members of my family who have taught me so much about life and how to live it that are the inspiration for Matthew Holland and four of his team members. You know who you are.
Thank you goes to Dr Brett Lockyer BM, BSc (Hons), FRCPath for taking time out of his already busy schedule and his putting up with my endless questions about how to kill someone and the associated pathology and due process involved. Also for his keeping my plans within the realms of what is possible in reality.
Thank you also goes to John Giffard CBE QPM for being kind enough to talk to me about police procedure in relation to certain types of death and what relations might realistically be like between an investigating police force and a team of private investigators.
Finally, thank you to everyone else who has a hand in helping to make this first book a reality. I am very grateful to you all. This book would not have happened without your help.
About the author
Adam Melrose grew up in the wilds of Scotland and studied Agriculture.
He now lives close to London.
After many years working in software design and IT, in 2019 Adam took the plunge and decided to see if he could write a novel. He undertook online classes in writing, including two with successful writers who have been kind enough to share their wisdom and expertise with beginners.
The first piece of advice he got from both writers was
‘Write the book you want to read.’
So he did.