But this time he did answer, and I was just in the midst of demanding where the hell he’d been when the voice at the other end spoke for the first time.
‘Dad? Why are you calling this number?’
60
DCI Cameron Doyle
You see, the big problem I’ve got with this whole sorry mess is that nothing’s cut and dried. Hard evidence is scarce. Yes, I’ve got suspects admitting to killings that we know happened, but it’s either self-defence, in Kate’s case, or an accident, in Matt Walters’. No one’s confessing to being the bad guy, which I know is not uncommon in murder cases, but there are no independent witnesses to state otherwise. Geeta Anand is dead, as is Piers MacDonald. MacDonald’s girlfriend, Laura Walton, the woman who reported his murder, has disappeared off the face of the earth.
Yes, we’ve got Clint Thomson in custody, although at this juncture I think it’s worth pointing out that his real name is Brian. He changed it to Clint in honour of Mr Eastwood, which just goes to prove he’s something of a lughead. However, Clint isn’t actually telling us anything. He got himself heavily lawyered up, courtesy of his boss, and has been giving the classic ‘no comment’ response to every question he’s been asked. In reality, we haven’t got much on him. He wasn’t carrying a gun when he was arrested, and we can’t use Obote’s testimony against him because it would be thrown out of court as soon as it became clear that an undercover police officer had stood by while a civilian was threatened with a firearm. So he’s probably going to walk.
Which leaves me relying on the testimony of my three suspects to piece everything together, and as I’ve told you before, I think they’re all lying to varying degrees, leaving me no further forward as to who was behind this thing.
But it seems Matt Walters has his own suspicions. He thinks there was something off about his fiancée when he came riding to her rescue, and it’s time to exploit this. So I come right out and say it. ‘Do you think Kate set up the kidnap herself, Matt? And used you as a pawn?’
‘No way,’ he says straight away, an expression of utter shock on his face, although something tells me he’s trying just a little bit too hard. ‘I don’t believe that,’ he continues. ‘I told you, she was in a terrible state when I found her. There’s no way that was an act, and I ought to know.’
From what I hear about Matt Walters’ acting abilities, that may not be the best recommendation, but I let it go. It’s interesting that, unlike most people in a loving relationship, he doesn’t add that Kate would never use him like that.
It’s DS Tania Wild who speaks next. ‘Logistically it’s possible though, isn’t it, Matt, that the man Kate alleges was her kidnapper, Nigel Burns, could have been her accomplice. He could have tied her up and made it look as if she’d been held against her will. It wouldn’t have been hard. Obviously, too, she’d have a motive to get rid of him, wouldn’t she? To make sure no one found out about her plan. It would explain the missing flash drive you allegedly left at the bridge in Hedsor, and which still hasn’t turned up.’ Tania speaks softly, reasonably, as if what she’s saying is the most obvious explanation.
Walters, though, looks at her aghast. ‘No way. Why would she even do that? She didn’t need to.’
‘Well,’ I say, joining the conversation, ‘you said yourself that Kate had a motive for getting rid of all the copies of the drive. And she’d garner a huge amount of sympathy as a kidnap victim.’ I’m not sure I believe any of this, but it’s important that it’s not discounted either. I need to make sure that Walters is telling us the whole truth.
‘I don’t buy it,’ he says, firmly, but once again there’s still a doubt in his voice that he can’t quite hide. He might not accept this theory, but he’s not wholeheartedly dismissing it either.
Tania picks up on this too. ‘Don’t try to protect Kate, Matt, because let me tell you, she’s not protecting you.’
He knows this. You can see it in his face. His bottom lip actually quivers and I think he might cry. He takes a deep breath, composes himself and looks at us both in turn. ‘She’s the mother of my baby,’ he says.
I let Tania give him the bad news, which she delivers without looking at me for permission, in a voice that’s sympathetic but with just the barest hint of glee. ‘She’s not pregnant, Matt.’
His whole body jolts when he hears this, like the chair’s just given him an electric shock. This is definitely news to him. Not even Ben Kingsley could pull that one off as an act, and Matt Walters is no Ben Kingsley. ‘What? I . . .’ He keeps looking at us both, his mouth opening and shutting like a fish, and then replies: ‘I don’t believe you.’
‘I’m sorry, Matt, it’s true,’ I tell him, meeting his eye. ‘We’re not allowed to lie about something like this in an interview.’ Which isn’t entirely true, but he doesn’t need to know that. He just needs to believe us.
Tania gives him a sympathetic smile. ‘Kate has admitted that she was pregnant but that she lost the baby over a week ago, before you returned to England.’
We let the ramifications of this settle in. If Kate could lie to him about this, she could lie to him about anything.
He puts his head in his hands so that his face is covered, and I wonder if he’s crying. When he takes them away again, I see there are tears in his eyes but that he’s determined not to break down in front of us, and I admire him for that.
‘So why don’t you tell us what happened at Roper’s house, Matt?’ I say. ‘The truth.’
61
Matt
I wanted to go straight to the police after I’d got Kate away from the abandoned hotel, but she insisted on going home first to shower and change, and stupidly, I didn’t argue. In the end, I guess I wanted to put off handing myself in as well, since I knew the chances were I’d be held in custody, potentially indefinitely.
But once Kate was cleaned up and in fresh clothes, she said she still had things to do before we alerted the authorities. ‘I have to see my father,’ she told me. ‘Right now.’
Her tone was terse, angry, and I remember thinking that this woman seemed very different to the one I’d left at home the night before.
‘Are you sure that’s a wise thing to do? If your father was in contact with the kidnapper then he may have been behind the whole thing.’ Although this did beg the question of why he had sent that psychopath with a gun after me. But either way, I didn’t think it was a good idea. Especially as I felt sure that Roper had been the one who’d hired Geeta to set me up, and the last thing I needed was that coming out.
But Kate wasn’t having it. She was insistent. And worse, she wanted me to come with her. ‘If he’s behind it, he won’t hurt me, not now. Not if I confront him. But I have to see him face to face and find out what he knows.’
‘But what about the baby? You need to get checked over.’
‘The baby’s fine, Matt. And this isn’t going to take long.’
I knew there was no point in arguing – Kate wasn’t the type to back down when she’d made her mind up about something – so I agreed to drive her there, knowing she was too traumatised to go alone. I just hoped that the business with Geeta didn’t come out.
The drive to Sir Hugh Roper’s house took just over twenty minutes. On the way there, we finally talked. She asked what had happened to me in the previous twenty-four hours. In truth, with my bruised and bloodied face, it looked like I’d gone ten rounds in the ring, and I was surprised – and maybe a little disappointed too – that it had taken her this long to ask the question.
I gave her a blow-by-blow account of the worst day of my life, leaving out none of the details. Except Geeta. I made no mention of her. That would come out eventually, but I didn’t want to get into a discussion about her now.
‘Oh God, Matt, that’s terrible,’ Kate said when I’d finished. ‘We’ll get you a good lawyer, I promise. You’ll beat any charges.’
‘I hope so,’ I said, although somehow I doubted it. ‘And now it’s your turn to talk. I think afte
r everything that’s happened, and the fact that I’m now wanted for murder through no fault of my own, I deserve to know about you. Your real story.’
So she told me. About her childhood, growing up poor in a single-parent family. Losing her mum at sixteen, finding out the real identity of her father, his rejection of her, and her attempt to connect with him through his other daughter. Alana’s death when Kate had told her the two of them were sisters, and the guilt she’d felt as a result, leading her to make the fateful visit to Piers MacDonald for therapy. And then finally the murder of her boyfriend and the attempt on her own life.
I could tell it was hard for her to open up, and when she’d finished talking, I felt a great surge of emotion. I truly loved this woman and I remember feeling appalled that I could ever have suspected her of being involved.
As the car finally fell silent, a phone started ringing. We both looked round to see where it was coming from, then Kate pulled the kidnapper’s phone from her jeans pocket. She looked at me. ‘It’s my father.’
‘You’d better take it, I guess,’ I said, although I wasn’t sure it was a good idea to give him advance warning that we were on our way to his house.
Kate pressed the green button, and a burst of invective came down the line.
‘Dad?’ she said, putting the phone on loudspeaker. ‘Why are you calling this number?’
‘Kate, is that you?’ He sounded genuinely shocked. ‘Are you safe? Where are you?’
‘We’re about to pull into your driveway,’ she answered, her voice hardening. ‘I need some answers. Like why are you calling the phone of the man who kidnapped me?’
‘Nigel? He was behind this?’ Again he sounded incredulous. ‘It was nothing to do with me, Kate, I promise you. Nigel Burns was my head of security for thirty years. I was asking him to find you.’
Kate took a deep breath. ‘We’ll be with you in a few minutes,’ she said, and ended the call.
‘Do you think your father really is behind this?’ I asked, as she directed me into a partially hidden driveway with a gatehouse and a grand stone arch enclosing two huge wrought-iron gates.
She screwed her face up in concentration. ‘I don’t think so. If it was him, I can’t understand why he’d do it now. If he genuinely thought I had anything to do with Alana’s death, why not do it before, or at the very least make sure I didn’t inherit?’
And that was the issue. None of the scenarios made sense. ‘Whoever’s behind this wants proof that you killed Alana,’ I said, ‘but they don’t want that proof being made public. Otherwise, why make me chase round after the flash drive that MacDonald gave to his girlfriend if they already had the information they needed? And more to the point, why have me kill him after he’d delivered the drive? If he really did have information that you’d killed Alana, then surely they’d want to keep him alive.’
‘Jesus, Matt, I don’t know,’ she said, sighing. ‘All I know is that I was kidnapped by the man who almost killed me sixteen years ago, and who was obsessed with finding out whether I killed Alana, to the point where he made me take a lie detector test. And do you know what? I didn’t kill her, and nothing in those notes, or on that drive, is going to say otherwise. And before you ask, the reason I paid that bastard MacDonald for my notes, and the illegally made audiotapes of our sessions, was because I didn’t want anyone else gaining access to them. They were private.’
‘Look, I believe you, honey,’ I said hurriedly. ‘I really do.’
She seemed to calm down, sitting back in the seat and taking a couple of deep breaths as we drove up the long, straight driveway, through perfectly manicured lawns that led up to a vast country house straight out of Downton Abbey. There were plenty of lights on inside and three cars parked in the huge turning circle directly outside the imposing front door.
I turned the rental car round and parked a few yards away from them, facing the exit, before cutting the engine and looking at Kate. ‘Are you sure about this?’
She nodded, and we looked at each other for several seconds. Then she leaned over and kissed me on the lips. It felt good. I wanted the kiss to last. I wanted to hold her properly again.
But she was already getting out of the car.
I opened my door and jumped out after her. By that point I’d faced so much danger that the thought of going inside filled me more with curiosity than fear. I needed to find out what was really going on, and figured that entering the lion’s den was going to be the best way.
‘Okay,’ I said, catching her up. ‘But I’m going to record everything on my phone. I need all the evidence I can to get me out of this.’
‘You haven’t done anything wrong, Matt. We’ll clear your name, don’t worry.’
But there was something brusque in her tone that would have bothered me if I’d had more time to think about it. Instead, I followed her up the steps to the front door, standing behind her as she banged the old-fashioned brass knocker and turning on the record function on my phone.
Sir Hugh Roper’s voice came over the intercom, telling her that he was in the study, and the front door buzzed and opened.
Kate led the way into a grand entrance hall with a massive chandelier dominating the ceiling. It was clear she knew the place well, because she went straight to a door on the right, gave a cursory knock and opened it. Sir Hugh Roper was standing there waiting for her. I recognised him instantly, although he looked older and frailer than he did in his pictures, and with a noticeable stoop. But there was no disguising the relief on his face at the sight of his daughter.
He immediately took her in his arms and buried his head in her shoulder. ‘Are you okay, my darling?’ he asked. ‘I thought you were dead.’
Kate was holding him just as tightly, giving me an unwelcome pang of jealousy, although if I was going to be the beneficiary of all his money, perhaps I’d be making a supreme effort too.
Finally they broke off the hug, and with a hostile glance over his shoulder at me, which instantly confirmed that he’d been the one who’d hired Geeta, Roper moved out of the way.
The study was enormous, the size of my old London apartment. A fireplace with a blazing hearth took up half a wall, giving the place a warm, cosy feeling that was immediately undermined by the woman standing beside the mahogany desk glaring at us.
I guessed this was Roper’s first wife, Diana, and she was an altogether more formidable prospect than him. A short, stern woman dressed younger than her years in jeans, leather jacket and heeled ankle boots, with subtle touches of plastic surgery about her face, she had that naturally hard look of someone you wouldn’t want to cross. And from the expression on her face it was obvious, if I hadn’t known it already, that Kate had crossed her very badly indeed.
‘What the hell is she doing here?’ she hissed furiously.
‘She’s my daughter, Diana,’ Roper snapped back.
Kate glared back at the other woman with the same level of vitriol. ‘And what’s she doing here?’
‘She came to talk to me,’ said Roper. ‘Can I get you a drink?’ He didn’t offer me one.
‘A large brandy, please,’ answered Kate.
I looked at her. ‘What about the baby?’
‘She’ll survive one drink,’ she said without turning my way.
‘You’re pregnant?’ said Roper. ‘From him?’ He almost spat out the last two words.
She nodded. ‘I was waiting to get to three months before I told you, just in case anything went wrong.’
I didn’t say anything, not wanting to draw attention to myself. I knew I was on thin ice here.
Roper looked torn. Pleased on one hand that he was going to be a grandfather – even if he’d never live to see his grandchild – but clearly not happy that I was the father. ‘Congratulations,’ he said to her with a half-smile, before going over to a drinks cabinet filled with every kind of alcohol imaginable, all of it expensive-looking, and poured her drink.
All the while, Diana and Kate glared at each other from a
distance of ten feet apart, like two fighters sizing each other up. Kate might have had thirty years and at least three inches in height on Diana but I wouldn’t have bet my house on her winning any fight. And me? I’ll be honest with you, it felt as if I wasn’t there. No one was taking any notice of me at all, so I just stood in the background watching the whole thing unfold.
‘So you’re pregnant, are you?’ said Diana, her voice utterly cold. ‘How very convenient. Planning on carrying on the family name? But which family exactly?’
‘Why don’t you sit down, Diana,’ said Roper. ‘You’ve caused enough trouble as it is.’
‘What? And have a nice civilised drink with the bitch who killed Alana? I don’t think so, Hugh. You might have no spine, but I still retain one.’
Roper went to speak but suddenly doubled over with a coughing fit, only just managing to hang on to the brandy. He quickly recovered himself, holding a handkerchief to his lips and handing Kate her drink. ‘We need to get you seen by a doctor,’ he told her.
‘I could say the same thing about you,’ she answered. ‘I’m okay, but I’ve spent a very unpleasant twenty-four hours locked up in an abandoned hotel and I want to know who was behind it.’ She gave Diana a pointed look.
‘It was nothing to do with me, sweetie,’ said Diana, taking a gulp from an outsized tumbler. ‘If I’d had anything to do with it, you wouldn’t be here.’
Kate’s expression darkened in a way I hadn’t seen before. ‘I almost wasn’t.’ She turned to Roper. ‘I managed to escape and kill the kidnapper.’
‘Something you’ve had practice at,’ said Diana.
Kate ignored her and kept her gaze on her father. ‘We know now he was someone connected with you.’
‘The phone I called you on belongs to Nigel Burns. He was meant to be keeping an eye on you while you were back in the country. That’s why I’ve been speaking with him today. I even saw him this morning.’
‘Well, he abducted me from our cottage. And now he’s dead.’
Kill A Stranger: the twisting new thriller from the number one bestseller Page 25