By the Light of a Lie (Thane & Calder Book 1)

by Marjorie Orr

  ‘Foreign-sounding geezer. Started by saying something like ‘anjep’. Then switched into English, but with an accent. And cut it rapidly when he found it was a cold call.’

  ‘Anjep,’ she repeated, rolling it round her mouth. ‘Could be Russian for hi or could be a name.’

  ‘Which is no help since London is full of Russkies, Albanians, you name it. You want something nasty done, they’re up for hire.’

  She stared disconsolately at the file boxes on the floor. Her shoulders flinched as a cold draught ran down her spine. Her teeth gnawed at her lip.

  ‘I don’t know what the hell’s wrong with me, Herk,’ she said, sitting up straight suddenly. ‘I spend my life chasing nasty people on faint trails and hunches and dig up shit till it all gets tied together. With this I feel... scared isn’t quite the word, but edgy, erratic. One moment firing ahead, the next thinking it’s all nonsense and wanting to chuck it in.’

  He rubbed one boot against his blue overalls, considering his answer. ‘I’m no wanting to push you either way,’ he said slowly, ‘but if you want my honest opinion this thing is bigger than you think. Not because you’re being watched. Just my guts, I suppose. It feels,’ he hesitated, ‘like the kind of thing that could prove you more right than you ever wanted to be.’ He looked at her calmly and kindly. ‘But you’re in the driving seat. Your choice.’

  She sighed. ‘I keep hearing this voice saying in my head – what am I going to do, what am I going to do? I had that all through my childhood. Suppose it was being on my own too much. But normally when I’m working I’m like a terrier after a rat.’

  He grinned. ‘You strike me as bigger than a terrier, given the people you’ve tangled with in the past. But maybe here, I don’t know the circumstances, but maybe it’s because your mother was killed, much like Erica was. It’s got you rattled.’

  Outside a police siren wailed, vying with an errant car alarm and a circling helicopter for attention. For an instant, Tire wished desperately for the peace and wildness of the islands. London’s anonymity and busyness was normally a comfort. Only occasionally did it threaten to crowd in on her. She swung her chair round to stare out of the window.

  Across the street two crows were at their usual game of harassing a pigeon, chasing it round rooftops. Suddenly all three birds scattered, as a small hawk came into view. It circled purposefully scanning the ground below for prey.

  ‘You don’t often see these here,’ she said, her interest diverted. ‘It’s a sparrowhawk.’ She laughed. ‘Mrs Mac, who looked after me up in Inverness when I was young, always said they were lucky, the messengers of God because they flew the highest.’

  ‘She was good to you, was she?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah, that was very early on. She baked great pancakes and tucked me in at night. Must have been after my mother died.’ Smiling at the memory, she felt warmer.

  ‘Superstitious, was she? The Highlanders often are. I fought with a number of the lads from up there, always looking for omens they were. And sometimes they were right, too.’

  The hawk dived out of sight behind a row of buildings, then emerged a moment later, its wings pushing it rapidly upwards. Herk moved close to the window.

  ‘D’you know, ah think it might have got a mouse.’

  Tire pushed his arm. ‘You can’t possibly see at this distance. Even your miraculous talents don’t give you the eyesight of an eagle.’ He nodded mischievously and went off to the kitchen to find a bottle of wine.

  ‘Now,’ he said, handing her a glass, ‘I think you need to sort out your family stuff before you go any further, even just a bit. Otherwise you’ll be in a muddle.’ He raised a hand to stop her protest and said firmly: ‘On the way down to Dover on Sunday you can drop in and see this St Clair guy and it might put your mind at rest before we get to Spain.’

  ‘He might be dead!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘No, he’s not. I checked,’ he said with a satisfied grin. ‘And I’m not taking no for an answer on this. You’ll go and see him and I’ll drop in on a mate at Sandhurst when you’re there.’

  It was a strange feeling having the decision made for her. Normally she objected strenuously to outside interference, but she found herself relaxing into the inevitable. Her shoulders dropped and the tension in her spine unwound.

  ‘Now what do they mean?’ Herk pointed out the window as a pair of large-winged grey birds with trailing feet made their way with slow, powerful wing beats across to the east.

  ‘Herons. The Egyptians thought they were a sign of new beginnings.’ She watched them make their unhurried, rhythmic way out of sight.

  ‘Ah. Kind of storks, are they? Saw a lot of them in the Middle East, smaller mind you, and white. Can’t say they brought us much luck, but maybe the grey ones are better.’

  ‘It’s all in the eye of the beholder, I think, when it comes to omens,’ she replied with a faint smile.

  CHAPTER 27

  Unusually, Tire lay in bed next morning staring at the ceiling with daylight streaming through the blinds, reluctant to emerge into the day. As far back as she could remember, she had blocked out her father’s existence, reducing him in her mind as far as she thought about him at all to a degenerate. It was shocking to be faced with evidence of his money and his connections. The insatiable curiosity that drove her career had run into a complete blank where he was concerned. She was not at all sure she wanted to lift the veil at this late stage.

  The day was overcast when she got up, with sporadic thunderclouds casting a pall over the morning. The office uplighters were on full as Tire waded her way through Erica’s documents and notebook. After two hours, having come up with no names relating to Anjep and nothing else significant, she admitted defeat. What she needed was Erica’s old case files. They would be under lock and key in the chambers. Not even Dumbo Dunstan would be gullible enough to give her access to them.

  Her long experience of research was that persistence paid off. Keep wading through mountains of confusing or irrelevant information, up cul-de-sacs, round circular tracks and at some point it all began to fit together. Like a mole, she thought, burrowing its way through the darkness until it hit daylight. The key was not to give up and stay buried along with the secrets someone didn’t want known.

  A clap of thunder followed by a jagged fork of lightning brought the rain sheeting down and some relief from the slight headache that had dogged her since she got up. The rest of the day stretched ahead of her with nothing she could sink her teeth into. No work made her uneasy, to add to the already edgy feeling she had about the days ahead. Her discomfort was largely about being dragged into her father’s past rather than the Spanish resort visit, which she reckoned was probably going to be a waste of several days.

  A phone call to Jackson St Clair, her father’s executor, had fixed a Sunday morning meeting at his house. The elderly voice on the other end sounded surprised and wary when she phoned. ‘How had she got his number?’ he asked. She said shortly it had been on his letter to the lawyer. There were longish pauses between his answers, but finally he said if she felt it worthwhile then to come, but there was little he could tell her and it would have to be brief since he had a lunch engagement.

  She knew Herk was right about sorting out her family situation since it was fogging her brain and preventing her intuition working. An old therapist had once said that she coped with her ruptured childhood by overinvesting in her mind and pushing her emotions out of sight. What had she called it? The regressed self. A swamp of unarticulated feelings that had to be kept firmly closed off to prevent it drowning her coping self.

  How bad could it be? St Clair probably knew nothing and had only been put in place by the court as a safe pair of hands to oversee her father’s money. He may not even have met her father. Get the meeting over and then get on with pursuing Erica’s killer.

  Whitney Houston’s ‘The Bodyguard’ soundtrack, which she hadn’t listened to in years, was back on for a second time. Tears prickled behind her
eyelids as she remembered how her teenage self had clung onto the soulful lyrics of loss and fear, needing someone who would keep her safe. Twenty years on, she had lost that hormonal anguish. Only occasionally did the ache of aloneness surface to beat against the resilience she had built up. Grow up, she told herself crossly, and reached for Russell’s financial report on Paul Stone.

  ‘Company accounts – multiple private companies, byzantine structure, impossible to unpick. Donations listed for tax relief – Alzheimer Drug Research – £15 million to California University laboratory. Memory drug research £10 million Paul Stone to Vana Clinical Laboratory in Mexico City (first of these kosher, heavily regulated. Second????) Will pursue via sources in HMRC and SFA.’

  What would Revenue and Customs know about a Mexican research facility, she wondered? The Fraud Office would be keeping an eye on money laundering, but that was normally money going in the other direction into legit UK banks. She racked her brain trying to think of who in her contacts book might know about the Mexican pharmaceutical scene. If Russell was pursuing, it had obviously raised flags in his mind.

  The phone rang, with the name Sibyl on the screen. A pang of guilt made Tire frown. It was months since they had spoken.

  ‘My dear, how are you?’ The voice was quavery, but still clear. She must be in her mid-eighties now. The conversation moved through pleasantries about Sibyl’s move to Brighton, her walks by the sea with her recently acquired shih tzu from the rescue pound, the new clientele she was building up, while Tire wracked her brain trying to find excuses for not having been in contact.

  ‘I know you’ve been very busy, but I just had the impulse to call you. I never ignore these feelings, so tell me – what is going on with you?’

  There was a time years ago when Tire had clung onto Sibyl, needing someone to calm her anxiety and hold back the blackness that was threatening to drown her. The justification had been for Sibyl to expand her knowledge of astrology, since self-teaching only went so far. The trust that built up through their weekly telephone calls and occasional visits had prompted Tire to be honest for the first time about her story and vulnerabilities. And Sibyl provided an alternative perspective, a structure, albeit fragile and imperfectly understood, to stave off the random chaos of the world.

  Two sentences collided in Tire’s head and she couldn’t decide which was more important. Taking a deep breath, she said: ‘My friend was murdered in a hit and run. I’m trying to find who was responsible. And I’m going to see my old guardian, the executor of my father’s estate tomorrow, whom I’ve never met.’ She gulped down a mouthful of cold coffee and reached for a cigarette.

  Long silences were normal with Sibyl, so she waited. Papers rustled at the other end and the voice, when it came, was stronger.

  ‘A challenging time emotionally, that is certainly clear. Uranus is over-strong in your chart as it is. You will have to curb your impulsiveness. You cannot find your friend’s killer on your own, my dear. And a family matter on top will put you off balance.’

  ‘I have Hercules.’ Tire chuckled. ‘He crossed the River Styx into the underworld and made it back, didn’t he?’ Then she added: ‘Herk’s an ex-squaddie, much more sensible and cautious than I am and handy in a tight spot.’

  ‘Good. But you must be careful. In the next two weeks there will be surprises, unexpected turns, some danger from accidents and unpleasant people. What sign is Herk?’

  ‘Taurus.’

  ‘Solid, unflappable, practical. Doesn’t like being pushed around. You’ll get on well with him since you’re Virgo, both earth signs. If you can stop arguing, that is. He’s very stubborn.’

  ‘Too true.’ Tire laughed, then stopped. ‘Are you really worried?’ Sibyl wasn’t prone to phoning up with warnings.

  ‘Well, as you know, my dear, it’s never possible to say literally what will happen. It is symbolic information and we can only see the potential, not necessarily the outcome. But I did have a client this week who was born two days before you. She had been mugged and was in a terrible state. It reminded me and I looked up your chart. You obviously haven’t checked it recently.’

  Staring at the computer screen with her chart displayed after the call ended, Tire knew exactly why she hadn’t been paying attention. She was scared it would show up losses that might mean Jin would be killed. Her own safety had never crossed her mind.

  ‘Just checking that we’re not about to fall off a cliff, are you?’ Herk’s voice made her jump and she swore. She scrabbled to find the volume command and turned the music down.

  ‘It’s nothing.’ She pulled down the cover of her laptop. ‘Just idling the day away. What have you been doing?’

  ‘Sorted out the car, all the documents in order.’ He slurped a mouthful of tea and gazed at her with that irritating question in his eyes. ‘And I got word from Momo about Greengate.’

  ‘What did he say?’ she said, suddenly back in focus.

  ‘First off, he said if his drink had been spiked on the train he’d never have driven home. So we can forget that. He’d have had to have taken something when he got home. There were faint traces of – I can’t mind what he called it – but a slight question mark from the test. But they only took his blood later that day and most of these GHB and date rape kind of drugs clear quickly. He said you really need to test the hair since it lingers there much longer. He was also on heart medication. Frankly, he said it was a miracle he survived, having had a bucket of vodka on top.’

  ‘Trying to make it look like a murder-suicide, then?’ she nodded.

  He lifted one foot off the floor, rolled it in a circle and said evenly: ‘Well, we need to go cautious. It could very well have been a murder-suicide.’ He put up a hand in response to her glare. ‘I’m just saying, keep an open mind. There’s no more than a grain of sand of solid evidence pointing in any direction at the moment.’

  She looked intently at him. ‘What does your gut tell you?’

  He sniffed, rubbed a fingernail across his teeth, then chewed the inside of one cheek and finally blew out a breath. ‘Well,’ he said dragging out the vowel, his eyes narrowed, ‘I’d have to say I do think there’s something not right been going on. There’s just too many loose ends and oddities. But,’ he emphasised with a hand slapping onto the window ledge, ‘that doesn’t mean all the loose ends join together. We just need to follow them all through separately.’

  He glanced down at her laptop as an email pinged in. She turned back round, minimised the astrology software and opened her inbox. The research from Matt on Paul Stone’s wives was there on an attachment. She printed off a copy of the one page report and handed one to Herk.

  First wife – Alessia Baglia, born 23 February 1936, married 1953 Constantino Neroni, Rome, one son Louis Claude born 1955, widowed 1957, husband killed skiing accident. Married 1962 Paul Stone, deceased 1965. Accidental death in cliff fall, Amalfi.

  Second wife – Souri Javadi, born 1 January 1940 Tehran, married Paul Stone in Beirut 1966, deceased 1972, car crash in Stelvio Pass, Italian Alps, body not found for two weeks in heavy snow.

  ‘My, isn’t he the unlucky one with wives?’ Herk remarked.

  ‘I’ll say,’ she said, ‘and both with no way of proving foul play, dammit.’ She stared at the paper. ‘I’ll set Matt off to see if he can dig up the first wife’s son, Louis Neroni. He’d have been eleven when she died. Might just be worth pursuing.’

  ‘D’you think?’ Herk looked askance. ‘I’ve known some very unlucky guys, people dropped dead all around them and it wasn’t because they tried.’

  ‘Believe me, just by looking you can tell there’s something dark at the heart of that Stone family. Senior may be the perfect English gentleman, but he has handed a toxic legacy down to his son. If one generation doesn’t live out the nastiness, the next one down gets a double dose.’

  ‘But the death of his wives, maybe his stepson, would have nothing to do with Harman since he hadn’t been born.’

  She jerked her h
ead up, cricking her neck and swung round in her chair to glare at him. ‘You keep telling me to focus on Erica and I really cannot see Paul Stone getting involved in anything so crass as a hit and run.’ The African statuette on the desk wobbled as she banged one clenched fist up and down. He smiled calmly, infuriating her more.

  ‘You’re in a muddle, careering from one theory to the opposite. Just try to stick with what we know. Is the astrology no help?’

  ‘You don’t believe it.’ She turned back to stare moodily out of the window and muttered: ‘Anyway, you really don’t want to know what the next ten days is like.’

  ‘Well, you obviously do and you’re not stupid so there must be something in it. What’s up with the next two weeks?’

  His edgy question made her half-choke on a laugh and she said: ‘For us, probably just evilly bad-tempered. Out in the world there’ll be more accidents and disasters. With luck, we won’t be in the middle of them. No sense in both of us getting neurotic.’

  Herk shook out another Camel from the packet with one hand, steadying a twitch in his knee with the other.

  ‘Sensible caution isn’t the same as imagining horrors that will never happen. Tell me more about how it works. Just a crash course. I pick up things quick and I’ll try to be open-minded,’ he grinned.

  She gave him a weary look. Collapsing a decade of learning into a handful of soundbites wasn’t going to tell him much. Straightening her back, she plunged in. ‘Day-to-day predictions are based on how the planets aspect each other up in the heavens, plotted onto a two-dimensional plane. So, for instance, Uranus is square Pluto at the moment, square being a ninety-degree angle. That’s what has been causing all the global chaos in the past few years – rebellions and old structures collapsing. It was around before in the mid-1960s when Mao’s red revolution was raging, anti-Vietnam War and civil rights demos in the US and other stuff elsewhere. And before that the European year of revolutions in the nineteenth century.’