by Clare Curzon
‘Do you think so?’ Marion chased a smear of sauce with the last forkful of broccoli. ‘I’ve yet to hear what you’re expecting for yourself. As only surviving child, you must be old Matthew’s heir.’
‘Must I?’ Robert looked flummoxed. ‘We didn’t really get on. It would be like the twisted old bastard to leave it all to a rest home for retired cart-horses. He played his cards close to his chest. There was never a whisper of what he intended. Except to go on for ever. I honestly believe he thought he was immortal.’
‘Well, he wasn’t.’ Marion surveyed her neatly cleaned plate. Perhaps, Robert thought, that accounted for her tone of satisfaction.
‘Mother?’ Eddie whispered.
She had sat there holding his hand, talking quietly until sleep overcame her. His eyes opened on a glare of whiteness that was alien yet partly familiar. The sounds reaching him were of quick footsteps at some distance, quiet rushes of controlled movement with a purpose in them. Then, focusing, his eyes took in the bowed figure by his bed, the corner of an unlined floral curtain and its rail. There was a scent of something like pine trees but with a sweetness mixed in. Hospital, he told himself. Yes, he thought he remembered now. He had opened his eyes on something like it already. And before that – something much more terrible. He groaned quietly, aware now of the intrusions on his body, the paraphernalia of sickness.
‘Mother? Kate.’
She awoke in an instant and he felt the tremor of excitement from her hand into his own.
‘Hello, love.’ She was fighting emotion, but it was too much for her. She leaned forward and put her cheek against his, letting the tears run, wetting them both. ‘Oh, thank God, Eddie.’
‘Mother,’ he said, turning his head away. ‘There’s something … Tell Jess.’ He stopped. Hadn’t someone said Jess was missing?
‘Oh, my God!’ It was a hoarse shout, bringing the nurses running. ‘Nicholas!’
21
Gradually they were building a picture of what had happened, or of as much as Eddie had understood at the time. He insisted on speaking. Despite the surgeon’s veto on visitors other than his mother, Yeadings was there too.
He started with Jess waking him at Larchmoor Place and begging his help for someone injured in the garden. At first he spoke as if Nicholas was unknown to him, but when Stone quietly came in and took a seat alongside his mother Yeadings leaned forward and said, ‘We know who and what he was. Go on.’
‘Nicholas told me Signora … Sorry, it’s a complicated name. Charles Stone’s wife, anyway. She was behind it.’
He stopped to sip water from a tumbler which Kate held against his lips. ‘Someone meant to harm Jess and was coming to get her. I thought she’d be safe there until morning. Then I’d get them both away.’ He sounded shaken and ashamed.
There was another pause while he closed his eyes to assemble his thoughts. ‘He’d been shot at; was shocked. Not much more than a flesh wound. We put a pad on it. The bullet had gone through. We made him comfortable in the cellar. It was warm down there. He couldn’t get upstairs.
‘I must have been back asleep a while, but the radiator started knocking. It had run dry, air building inside. Then smoke – in the passage. I started shouting for everyone to get out. Downstairs – the fire – had really taken hold. I – went – for Nicholas.’
This time when he stopped, Kate protested. ‘No more, please,’ and the nurse came between, ordering them all out.
‘Just one thing,’ Stone insisted. ‘Did you see Jessica again?’
‘No.’ It was no more than a whisper as his eyes closed.
‘And after all that?’ Yeadings asked Stone.
The younger man shook his head. ‘We can only speculate. The house was already on fire. Do we assume whoever broke in was responsible? And had fought Nicholas off and ended up strangling him?’
‘If so,’ Yeadings granted, ‘and the body was left in the kitchen, Eddie would have found it as he burst in. The door to the cellar was left unlocked, as we’d supposed. Eddie dived through to escape the flames, or was blown through by the blast which Railton described. The intruder must have been down there, trying to get out by the coal chute. They fought hand to hand and Eddie was knocked out. Still no mention of Jessica. Had she left by then? I think she must have. Willingly or forced.’
Yeadings confronted the other man. ‘You believe the intruder was in your wife’s pay. So who did she know well enough to use for this?’
‘A thug called Jack Mortimer,’ he said tightly. ‘I always warned her against him. His ambition makes him dangerous. He has a streak of madness when he’s crossed. But he’s been useful to her in the past. Now he’s gone too far and must know it. I’ve had people looking for him since I first knew Jess was missing. He’ll be lying low, or out of the country.’
‘And your wife?’
‘Lives in Venice. She’s Italian. Mortimer works for her here in London alongside my accountants. That’s how Nicholas would have got wind of what he was up to. If Mortimer went first to Jess’s boat it gave Nicholas time to reach her before him. But he was just a finance man, not an operative in the field. He should have called in other resources.’
Yeadings digested his words. Stone, he decided, lived precariously on the thin line between the legal and the criminal. Only sanction from one of the intelligence agencies could be behind such confidence.
‘How did Nicholas know where to find her?’
‘He must have accessed my e-mail.’
‘With use of a password?’
‘I told you. I trusted him. It cost him his life.’
‘And this Mortimer got wind of his interest. Do you think he had him followed to Larchmoor Place?’
‘Almost certainly. After they missed shooting him down, Mortimer would have gone in himself. He’s a powerful man. Maybe he never meant to kill, or he went berserk and then had to cover up his tracks. He almost certainly started the fire, using whatever accelerant was to hand. By which time he must have made sure of Jess, leaving her somewhere outside while he set about rendering the body unrecognizable.’
They sat in silence while Yeadings considered this. Only conjecture, but it sounded possible. Faced by such a vindictive woman and her unpredictable thug, hadn’t Stone made any move to protect Jess? He said as much to him.
‘It worried me, but I never thought Giulia would dare … And Jess is such an independent young woman, I couldn’t clip her wings. She wouldn’t stand for that, and I love her too much. She insisted on living on the canal boat. What could I do, but see that her neighbour kept an eye on her? I gave him a mobile phone to use in emergencies.’
‘He never mentioned you,’ Yeadings marvelled. Stone had an unusual gift for acquiring discreet allies.
‘He alerted my PA who phoned me in Washington. I flew back at once. It was still too late.’
Yeadings sat, chin on chest, and mulled over how this might connect with what had happened to Sir Matthew and his daughter. Surely a separate matter. As he’d suspected earlier, there was more than one villain behind the misfortunes that had dogged the Dellars. Stone’s marital difficulties were recent. He believed a more ancient cause had brought about the death crash.
He rose and assumed a more formal manner. ‘Mr Stone, thank you. You’ve cleared up a lot of debris we could have done without. I wish you had approached me sooner. We shall continue to make every effort to trace Miss Jessica Dellar and I expect you to share with us any information that comes your way. As, indeed, I’m prepared to do for you.’
He nodded grimly. ‘I have the matter of the car crash to clear up now.’
‘Thank you, sir.’ Stone held out a card. ‘I’m leaving for Italy this evening. I know now where Jessica has been staying. She is still missing, but she did leave there by her own choice.
‘This is the number of my PA, Roger Beale. Please contact him if there is any news.’ He turned to Kate. ‘You will stay on at my place, won’t you?’
‘Thank you, but I’d rather g
et back home. I’ve things I can do there to keep myself busy. That way maybe I’ll worry less.’
Stone saw her to his car and watched as the chauffeur drove her off, then he returned to Yeadings with a request to run through the films they had taken from Eddie’s home.
Two of them were blank. ‘The cameras are only activated by movement,’ Stone said. ‘It looks as though no one’s been in those rooms since he was there himself.’
But the final film, taken from a point just inside the front door, showed Jess entering, walking the length of the passage and disappearing into the kitchen. With the door left ajar she came occasionally into view again, moving something to the kitchen table and a minute or so later removing it again. Shortly after that she returned via the passage and left. She hadn’t entered any of the other rooms.
‘What was she doing?’ Stone wondered aloud.
‘Helping herself to ice cubes from the fridge,’ Yeadings suggested. ‘Wanting a cool drink. Except that she put them all back. Now, why that?’
The frames were electronically dated. Jess had visited Eddie’s mews three days before they were both to meet up for Carlton Dellar’s eightieth birthday. There seemed no connection with her later disappearance.
‘Eddie Dellar doesn’t appear on any of the films himself,’ Yeadings pointed out. ‘But he had to be there, so I suppose he could de-activate the cameras as required.
‘I’ll send Zyczynski to check what’s been put in Eddie’s freezer,’ he continued. ‘In the meantime I trust you’ll keep me informed of your progress.’
With Stone’s departure he went down to the incident room which seemed disconcertingly quiet. The inquiry into the RTA at Woodside roundabout had reached an impasse. In the analysis room he searched the walls for fresh information. Only one item caught his interest: the report of a silver car having been seen parked on the verge to the far side of the island at about twenty minutes past ten on the night of the car crash. It had been pointing north and could have driven off without sight of the pile-up.
‘Which doesn’t help much,’ said the office manager who had just followed him in. ‘Silver is the colour of the moment. Everybody’s new car is silver.’
‘Have you shown photos of car models to the witness?’
‘She’s coming in this evening for that. She’s a midwife and she had plenty on her mind at the time. Not that she’s much upon cars. She’s a Ford Escort lady.’
Which, according to him, must mean an inertia purchaser. Yeadings grunted and moved on. ‘At least we have a silver car and number eight shoes, narrow fittings, for our Cinderella search. That’s all that supports it being a deliberate attempt on the Dellars’ lives. If nothing comes of that, and the oil spillage leads nowhere, we’ll have to let it go as an accident. It’s enough having Kate Dellar paranoid, without us going the same way.’
‘That other Mrs Dellar’s been in,’ Sergeant Thomas reminded him. ‘And senior CID are all out. She’s getting more than a mite impatient waiting to be seen.’
‘Ah, Claudia,’ Yeadings recalled. Salmon had intended making her uncomfortable over the nuisance phone call. Well, he supposed he might take that on himself. Could even get some satisfaction from it.
But for Jake having dropped out of the family group at the last minute, that malicious phone call would have been taken seriously. They could have hauled the boy in as suspect for a major crime. Spite like that didn’t make the handling of difficult youngsters easier for anyone.
Sergeant Thomas had understated Claudia’s present mood. Grim-faced and inwardly seething, she stood in angular silence, black against the light from the interview room’s high window. Yeadings was reminded of the witch in Hansel and Gretel, except that the crone was depicted stooped, and Claudia seemed to have added a further two inches to her rigid height.
‘Mrs Dellar,’ he said, sailing straight in, ‘we are interested in the phone call you made regarding a motorcyclist behaving in a drunken manner on the Windsor-Ascot road on the night of your brother-in-law’s accident.’
She denied it scathingly: she knew nothing about any call; stared him out and expected him to wither. He overrode her protests. ‘It seems unlikely that, however longsighted, you should have witnessed this from a distance of some sixty miles as the crow flies, Mrs Dellar.’
‘I agree it’s impossible. Which proves I did nothing of the sort. On the day of the accident I was at Cooden Beach with my husband and daughter. Maddie could have proved that if she had lived, because we spoke on the phone earlier that very evening. I know nothing of any motorcyclist.’
‘Because there was none. But you did make that call to the police. My colleague has checked it with the telephone company.’ This was a wild misstatement, but he was sure of her now.
He watched as she controlled the tremor that ran through her body. She couldn’t deny that she was caught out. Viciously she changed her stance. ‘It was my civic duty to report him. I knew how it would be. How he always behaved, full of drink, racing home on that infernal bike. Irresponsible young people like that need to be caught and taught a lesson.’
‘Not on a false accusation. You are guilty of a public mischief, Mrs Dellar. And can be charged with wasting police time. I’m surprised that you were incautious enough to let prejudice override your considerable knowledge of the law.’
She darted him a sharp glance, then stared defiantly past his head. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘It’s some years since you practised, Mrs Dellar, but not long enough for you to have forgotten the basics of law.’
She had not dreamed he knew her background. It struck her between the eyes, but she had an answer. ‘As you say, it was a long time ago.’ She spoke bitterly, her cold, snake-eyes fixed on him again.
‘You haven’t asked how it is that I’m so sure Jacob Railton wasn’t near the crash scene.’ He waited but she made no attempt to speak. ‘As it happens, he was in police custody elsewhere, for an unrelated offence. That might offer you some satisfaction, except that afterwards he was released with a caution.’
‘To terrorize the roads again.’
‘I hope not, but that is for him to decide. Meanwhile, I must warn you that you face a possible charge yourself, and will be hearing further about the matter.’
‘Is that all? You have caused me to travel all this way here for that?’ She was still fighting to put someone in the wrong. As he nodded she sucked in her lean cheeks, drew herself to her full height and swept out of the room.
‘No,’ Yeadings said aloud. He’d wanted her to be guilty of more than a malicious desire to put down a cocky young upstart. Since Z had come up with evidence of fraud from Claudia’s files (taken illegally and so useless in court) he had fancied her for the arsonist at Larchmoor Place. But now it seemed almost certain that the intruder (possibly Stone’s Jack Mortimer) had torched the house to destroy the murdered man’s body.
He was satisfied now that Claudia confined herself to greed and spite. A domestic tyrant, she hadn’t the stature to have engineered the business at the roundabout. And she wouldn’t have dared set Jake up if she’d prior knowledge of an oil spillage which could cause a death crash. That, for her, was a complication too far. It would have turned an apparent accident into something suspicious.
She channelled her bile into little, mean revenges. However much resentment soured her against old Matthew for his callousness in the past, she was not suddenly into murder now. It took a more devious and dangerous mind to set up the manner of his death.
But for what? Not money. No, it took a need for revenge greater than had ever inspired Claudia Dellar. Yeadings admitted he’d no idea who had reason to hate the man even more than her.
Restless after that negative session, Yeadings resolved to return for another word with Eddie. He was anxious to learn the end of his story. Maybe the young man had needed only a short sleep, and now was ready to continue.
As he drove into the hospital car park, he observed Stone’s car a few space
s away, with the chauffeur reading a newspaper against the bonnet. So Kate hadn’t agreed to be driven home. She’d come here instead.
He hurried along to the ICU, to find Eddie’s bed empty. A nurse directed him to a small side ward. ‘He’s still asleep,’ she said, ‘but doctor thought he’d like to wake up to different scenery. His mother’s there. Maybe you could get her a coffee or something.’
She opted for tea and he carried two polystyrene beakers back from the vending machine at the corridor’s end. Kate smiled as she took hers. ‘I’m so thankful,’ she said. ‘He’s going to be all right. I’ve been afraid that if he came round he wouldn’t be able to …’
Her eyes filled with tears. ‘He was looking after his sister. Like he always used to do, when they were little.’
But not carefully enough, Yeadings thought. He’d underestimated the risk. The fact of Nicholas being shot at should have been warning enough. He’d gone back to bed, to wait for morning. Maybe if Stone hadn’t been out of the country Eddie would have tried to get in touch, and the older man would have handled it better. Doubtless the outcome would serve as a hard lesson in whatever training the boy had signed up for.
Yeadings had barely settled again alongside Kate when his mobile trilled. It was Z reporting from Eddie’s house. He listened with amusement, then said, ‘Right. Just leave the keys on my desk. I’ll return them.’
‘That,’ he told Kate, ‘was my sergeant reporting on the contents of your son’s freezer. Apparently your daughter baked him a cake before they went to your brother-in-law’s birthday weekend and left it there as a surprise.’
‘Jess did? Are you sure? She’s no cook. She won’t do more than pop fast food in the microwave.’
‘So perhaps it was one she bought.’
Kate was still looking incredulous. ‘Why on earth would she do that? What kind of cake, do you know?’
‘A fruit one, my sergeant said.’
‘Certainly beyond her skills,’ Kate decided. ‘What on earth was she thinking of? She must know Eddie wouldn’t eat anything like that.’