by Keith Dixon
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
I TURNED AND SAW a silhouette against the open door. The silhouette was short and wide. It took a step towards me and the blurred outline resolved itself into Major Hoyt, Tara’s father, still wearing his complicated overcoat but this time carrying in his right hand a Browning High Power Double Action revolver, current model. There was a time when guns were a hobby of mine and I recognised this one easily. More easily because it was pointed towards my chest.
‘I said step away,’ he repeated, advancing a step. His face was pinched and focused, his hand rock-steady.
I stood back from the boot, barely able to take my eyes from Tara’s body. Curled up, she looked younger than her years and incredibly vulnerable. Her hair, auburn and disarranged as ever, fell sideways over her face and shoulders. Had she been dead before Hampshire put her in the boot? Or had she suffocated there? Dying a lonely and terrified death and wondering how she had ever entangled herself with a man like Hampshire in the first place?
I felt a vast reservoir of anger take shape and form inside me.
‘What’s there?’ the Major asked.
I said, ‘Sir, it would be better if you kept away.’
‘Move back,’ he said again. ‘I know how to use this, Dyke, and I won’t hesitate.’
I stepped further away and watched him edge down the length of the car, turning sideways to manoeuvre himself between the vehicle and the wall of the garage. When he reached the rear of the car, his eyes flicked down into the boot and the hand holding the Browning dropped immediately. A deep exhalation of breath came from him and his legs gave way. I stepped forward and caught him and took the gun from him in one move. He didn’t fight me, but immediately stiffened in my grip and raised himself upright.
‘Who ... who did this?’ he said.
‘Don’t you know? You’ve been following me.’
He looked up. ‘Of course I’ve been following you. On and off for the last few days. I don’t trust you, Dyke. Ever since Deborah left you I wondered what was the real reason for her sudden departure.’
I couldn’t waste my time dealing with the suspicions of a paranoid father, but I was going to need his cooperation.
I explained who Eddie Hampshire was and his relationship to Tara. I told him I thought they’d both been responsible in some way for Rory Brand’s death.
He had shaken himself from me and was leaning both his hands against the side of the Rolls-Royce, staring down at the floor and shaking his head. ‘Not murder, not Deborah,’ he said.
‘I don’t think she was present.’
‘I kept telling her that her choice of men would land her in trouble.’ He looked up at me. ‘Perhaps I misjudged you,’ he said. ‘At least you never did her deliberate harm.’
His remark affected me more than I expected. I opened my mouth to speak but my throat was too liquid for any words to emerge. In one way the Major was right—I’d never intended to hurt her—but I’d hurt her nonetheless. Because of my lack of attention, my self-centredness and my unwillingness to understand. And the cost to me now was as high as when she’d left me the first time.
‘We must call the police,’ Hoyt said. ‘We must track down this Hampshire person and get the police on him.’
‘I know how to find him,’ I said. ‘And I’m going after him. But I want you to wait before contacting the police.’
‘What do you mean, wait? We should tell them immediately. This is my daughter ...’
He broke and turned away, his head bowed. I reached a hand to his shoulder.
‘If we scare him now there’s no telling what he might do. I want to confront him and bring him in before he can do any more harm. And I think there’s someone else involved.’
‘Someone else? Who?’
‘I have an idea, but I’m not sure.’
He turned back to me. ‘Well for God’s sake make sure,’ he said.
I left him with his daughter and a plan that we agreed between us, then climbed in my car and headed north. The deadline that Hampshire had set for the weekend had been a feint, a trick. He’d been playing with us and our expectations all along, another element in his desire to show his superiority. Now, with Tara found, it was true that the sense of urgency that I’d felt had vanished.
But I still had a sense of purpose.