‘And he was evidently staying with friends. What’s your email address?’
Ruthie told him.
‘Prepare for a shock.’
When she accessed her email account, he’d sent her an attachment. She opened it. It was a black and white photograph of a man in military uniform. It was an informal shot, he was bare headed and smiling at the camera, or more likely at the photographer, probably a fellow officer.
She called McClain back. ‘It’s Dennis Thorpe,’ she said, ‘to the life, apart from that period uniform.’
‘No, it’s David Shanks,’ McClain said, ‘a shot taken in Paris in the autumn of 1917. Do you believe in reincarnation?’
‘No,’ Ruthie said.
‘Me neither. Do you believe in coincidence?’
‘Not on that scale,’ Ruthie said.
‘No. And neither do I.’
‘Why are you sharing this information with me?’
‘It’s looking less and less likely that any of the people who went on that retreat were selected at random. I want you to think very hard about why you might have been among those lured into going. Shanks didn’t just have the hidden agenda you suspected, it seems he had a criminal motive.’
‘I will think about it,’ Ruthie said.
‘And there’s something else,’ McClain said. ‘I think you lied to me, Ruthie. I think you did have a premonition and it was the reason in the end you didn’t go.’
‘What makes you think that?
‘When you told me about that episode last year and your belief in the paranormal, I got a strong hunch that something’s happened more recently to reinforce it.’
‘It was just a feeling,’ she said, ‘but you’re right and I’m sorry.’
‘Any more feelings like that and you share them with me.’
Chapter Seven
They’d spent the night at a boutique hotel. After breakfast, they spent the first part of the day at the Assembly Rooms, at the Women’s Institute’s weekly craft fair, looking at home-baked cakes and hand-embroidered tea cosies and buying bespoke pots of jam and marmalade and chutney. Quite what his cold-case colleagues at New Scotland Yard would have made of this, Lassiter could only guess. Alice seemed to enjoy it though and so, confidentially, did he.
In his working life he dealt daily with grave crimes committed long ago, with decades of injustice and sordid secrets desperately kept. It paid dividends to keep a distrustful and suspicious perspective, to take nothing at face value. Physically, he was lean and hard and had retained his fitness despite the drink and was even fitter, now he’d stopped. He was a handful and he knew that and didn’t particularly like it about himself. It was a welcome change to indulge his softer side.
They went back to their hotel room with their booty. The day was fine. Alice planned to hike up to the downs and tackle the ascent to Melbury Beacon. She’d said she wanted to do this alone and Lassiter understood why. She wanted the solitary time and space to think about what had happened the previous day and what its implications for her were.
He’d said he’d have a look around the town and then meet her when she returned for a late lunch at about 2pm at The Mitre pub on the High Street. He was quite relaxed about pubs. Bars raised no temptation in him to sample anything other than soft drinks. He no longer thirsted for oblivion. And they weren’t exactly spoiled for choice otherwise in Shaftesbury when it came to places to eat.
When Alice had gone, he went for a flat white and a leisurely read of the newspapers at Costa, before strolling out to contemplate the view over Blackmore Vale. He thought about the cuff-links and the episode of the previous day.
He thought the chances high that their original owner had been a local man. He’d had his schooling at Winchester, but boys were sent away to boarding school so that didn’t signify. He’d probably learned his soldiering on Salisbury Plain or Dartmoor before being shipped off to Flanders and the front and his premature death. He’d departed this idyllic region young. It was probably a large part of what he’d been fighting for.
For five minutes, Lassiter studied the view, thinking, futilely trying to spot his wife ascending through the vivid green grass and clusters of bushes and stands of wind-stunted trees dotting Melbury Hill on the far side of the vale. He was unsuccessful in this. It was too remote from him.
Then he walked to Bell Street and the antiques arcade, where the cuff-links had been put back in a locked display case with other trinkets. They reposed innocently enough among silver cigarette cases and ivory-backed bristle brushes and penknives and elderly items of shaving kit. They were priced at eighty pounds. He took four twenties from his wallet and paid for them in cash.
He got back outside onto the street having no very clear idea about why he’d done what he just had. The pair of items he’d bought had already proven hazardous to his wife’s health. They might even jeopardise her sanity. He loved her completely. She wasn’t only beautiful and clever, she was the best and most admirable person he’d met in his entire adult life and his devotion to her was total. But he had a copper’s instinct and had always trusted it. And it had told him, overlooking that glorious, bucolic, patchwork view of the vale that the cuff-links had a relevance to them that remained as yet unrevealed.
Alice was late returning. By the time she did, Lassiter had tucked the cuff-links out of sight and away in his travel bag in the boot of his car. Quite a lot of leather upholstery and steel bodywork would come between them and its front seat passenger there and in the past, before her psychic ability had departed her after New Hope, Alice would always need to touch an object for anything about itself to become known to her.
Just after 2pm, DS McClain called Lassiter to tell him what he’d tell Ruthie Gillespie less than an hour later about the link between Mabel Farrow, Jennifer Spring and Dennis Thorpe. He told him too about the strong physical resemblance between Thorpe and the New Hope crofter, David Shanks.
‘Shanks had a son, I remember telling you that.’
‘You didn’t tell me his name, Commander.’
‘His name was Peter. He died of stomach cancer some months before I got onto the case, in 2008. Before the diagnosis and eventually the hospice, he ran his own small insurance firm from an office in Kentish Town. He was born in 1948 and never married and wasn’t known to have had any children. How old is Thorpe?’
‘He’s 34, Commander, born in 1983.’
‘So if Peter Shanks fathered him, he did so when he was 35. And he was a love-child, maybe the consequence of a one-night-stand. It’s not inconceivable, is it?’
‘In the Western Isles, we’re brought up to believe Sodom and Gomorrah were probably significantly less lax morally than London. And London was even worse, then.’
Lassiter chuckled at that. ‘Or better,’ he said, ‘I seem to remember having a pretty good time in the early ‘eighties. The music was better, too.’
‘I’m with you there.’
‘You could only have been a toddler.’
‘1983 was the year of Culture Club.’
‘Okay, point proven. Tell Ruthie Gillespie what you’ve told me. She’ll likely remember more if you do. She’s a talent for this stuff.’
‘I told her that.’
‘Careful, son, you’ve a talent for this stuff yourself. Don’t go blowing it. Second chances are rare in our game. I appreciate that because I got one.’
Alice got back famished and flushed with sun and exertion. She said, ‘If we stay here till the end of the week, you should climb that hill to the beacon yourself. The view’s amazing. I’d come with you, walk up it again. I wished you were with me when I got to the top.’
They ate in the pretty garden to the rear of the pub. When she’d finished, Alice put down her knife and fork to either side of her plate and drank Diet Coke, draining her glass until the ice cubes clicked against her teeth. She put the glass down and looked at her husband. Her lips were bluish suddenly with the chill of what she’d just drunk.
She said,
‘How much did you pay for the cuff-links?’
‘How did you know?’
‘You look guilty. It’s all over your face. You haven’t been at the bottle. You’re definitely not having an affair. And you haven’t just lost the house betting on the horses at the bookies. What else is there? Process of elimination, darling, there’s nothing else.’
‘I didn’t think we’d finished with them.’
‘No, Patrick, what you mean is you didn’t think they’d finished with us.’
He didn’t reply to that.
‘Why are you so keen to help that young Scottish detective? I sense there’s a bit more to it than paternalism.’
‘Can you feel paternalistic about someone you’ve never met?’
‘Now you’re doing what you always do, answering a question with a question to avoid answering it at all. Are you hankering after a big investigation?’
‘I carry out big investigations,’ Lassiter said.
‘Not one centred on New Hope Island you can talk about in the present tense.’
He looked down and shook his head.
‘Dammit,’ she said, ‘Now I want a cigarette, first craving in five years. Damn you. Go and get the damn things, let’s get this over with.’
‘Are you going to smoke?’
‘No, I’m not. But I’m going to have a large gin and tonic.’
‘Are you going to do it here?’
She shook her head. ‘In our room, but they’re not in our room, because you’re too risk averse for that. They’ll be in the boot of the car. So go and get them. But go and get me a gin and tonic first. I’d say you owe me a drink, at the very least.’
He didn’t disagree with that. He fetched her drink and then went down to the car and then went back for her and they walked the route to their hotel silently together.
She sat on the bed and held out her hand with her eyes firmly closed. He thought she was demonstrating two certainties here. One was absolute courage, the other total trust. This was a traumatic ordeal for her, but he wouldn’t have gone to the antiques arcade a second time without believing there was more and that what more there was pertained somehow to them. He took the cuff-links out of his trouser pocket and placed them in her palm and she curled her fingers around their innocent gleam in the light through the window of precious metal and tiny gemstones.
She held onto them for a full minute before opening her eyes and tossing the cuff-links onto the counterpane, as a gambler might a pair of dice. A tiny blue artery beat under the pale skin at her right temple and her eyes were slightly bloodshot. He thought that could have been the gin, but knew it wasn’t. He couldn’t let himself off so lightly as that. He’d done this to her, because she’d done it only for him. The outer calm masked turmoil.
She said, ‘You were right. You’re always bloody right.’
‘I’m only ever right about a very narrow range of things.’
‘It must be a bit like being God.’
‘I can assure you it’s not,’ he said.
She said, ‘He was in an infantry division. He was a second-lieutenant and his name was Robert Cross. He saw a lot of action in a very short time. He lost his virginity on leave at a Brussels bordello. I’m glad he at least got the chance to do that. He was never afraid of combat, never, no matter how intense the fighting got. He was a courageous boy. There was though one officer he both disliked and feared greatly. That man was his platoon commander, Captain David Shanks.’
Chapter Eight
The storm centred on New Hope was localised and severe and seemed to be worsening. The island was simply not reachable until conditions there improved. What was sometimes described as its dock, built by Ballantyne’s colony, was just a cobbled recess at the edge of the sea. It lay sheltered by the high ground behind it from the prevailing westerly wind but had no breakwater and in a high swell, offered little better scope for putting ashore than anywhere else on the island’s perimeter. An approach by boat was impossible and a helicopter couldn’t fly, let alone land safely in those conditions without navigation lights on the ground.
Rescue wasn’t a priority. The seven members of the writer retreat, wherever they were, were no longer in DS McClain’s view anywhere on New Hope. It wasn’t proven that any crime had been committed, but the circumstantial evidence suggested deliberate deception on an orchestrated and serious scale. The husbands of Suzie Ford and Debbie Carter wanted more than tea and sympathy and family liaison officers going through their well-schooled motions. So did the wife of William Thompson, whose employers were anxious to see their money-making asset returned to them intact.
Freddie Boyle had a daughter, clearly ignorant of the fact that her father was a former soldier named Terry Conway, tearfully pleading for any news more or less hourly about her missing dad.
No one was petitioning on behalf of Dennis Thorpe or Jennifer Spring. And the Anglican diocese to which she belonged had become reticent on the subject of the Reverend Mabel Farrow to a degree that suggested to McClain that pennies were dropping there and doing so with a bit of a thud. He could follow that line of inquiry. But he thought he’d get more answers concerning the nature of what had happened on New Hope in the West of Ireland, at Liscannor on the coast of County Clare.
His superiors agreed with him on this. It meant a return Ryan Air flight and the cost of a hire car and a B&B. It was hardly going to break the bank, budget-wise. His bosses were sensitive to just how much tourism meant to the area they policed because it helped both pay their wages and justify their continued existence. Visitors vanishing inexplicably damaged tourism. They wanted the case cleared up if possible and pragmatically, couldn’t be seen to be sitting on their hands if one of the concerned relatives went to the press – something they suspected was going to happen imminently.
He’d have no jurisdiction in Ireland. But the Gardia were pretty cooperative when he contacted the Area Command by phone. He got the distinct impression, speaking to the Clare Chief Superintendent, that there was a story to be told and that the Irish police were willing to tell it. He booked his flight for that same evening. He would extend his investigation to Liscannor first thing the following morning. It was coming up for the summer equinox, the longest day, and the people of fishing and rural communities were early risers. Liscannor qualified on both counts.
Driving home to pack a bag, McClain thought about Ruthie Gillespie. Despite the logistics of where they resided, despite the cultural chasm between the elaborately inked Goth author and himself, despite the fact that he’d spent only an afternoon and evening in her company, he’d fallen pretty hard for her.
Maybe he was on the rebound. The brutal seismic domestic shock of divorce from Geraldine was still recent. He didn’t think it was that, though. He’d never met anyone with the disarming nature and sheer physical allure of Ruthie. Never in his entire life, he hadn’t. She was a one off and if he didn’t at least try for something with her, despite the impracticalities, he thought he’d regret it for a bloody long time.
He suspected by now that the innocents among the writers on the retreat to New Hope Island had perished. If so, he was off to Ireland to investigate a deadly conspiracy. He had no notion as to motive, but was certain this hadn’t been a case of abduction. That would require ideological or political motivation, or it would necessitate targets with a high ransom value. The only victim who fitted into that category was William Thompson. And as he’d said to Ruthie, the deadline for a ransom demand had been missed.
If Ruthie had gone she would be dead too. He’d never have met her. But more pertinently, a bright, beautiful life would have been extinguished heartbreakingly young and unfulfilled. He didn’t need that thought to give him the motivation to want to catch the perpetrators of this crime. It came to him nevertheless.
He thought then about what Ruthie Gillespie and Commander Lassiter had both said to him about New Hope; the island’s got form.
It was a place from which its entire population had vanished in
the 1820s. It was a place from which high profile expedition members had disappeared trying to solve that mystery only six years ago. It was a place that harboured secrets and had a habit of doing so successfully. Was he being complacent, thinking there was no one still there? Didn’t that assumption require another thorough search, involving a forensic team, a substantial number of boots on the ground and the participation of the death dogs? He was starting to think that it did. He was changing his mind about that. An assumption wasn’t a certainty without the demonstration of proof. But nothing practical could be done about it until the storm abated.
McClain shuddered, then. He had remembered the wraith David Shanks had filmed, still a screen-shot he could pull up on his phone’s display, should he so wish. He didn’t wish, though. He thought that even if he never saw it again, the memory of it would still stay with him forever. It had spooked Ruthie. And she hadn’t seen it move. He had, he’d seen the original footage and the way the bedraggled spectre of that little girl hurtled wilfully through space without regard for gravity or the speed at which a mortal creature could shift.
You couldn’t truly call New Hope Island uninhabited, if that thing was still there. He’d described it as a revenant and Ruthie had contradicted him, calling it demonic. He didn’t want to think about it, but forcing himself to, conceded she’d been right. Ghosts were generally thought to be lost or confused spirits. This antic creature looked conjured, or created, to torment and destroy.
He called Ruthie. ‘What’s a revenant?’
‘You could look it up.’
‘You can give me context.’
‘It’s a ghost. Its function is to disturb or terrify.’
‘You don’t think Rachel Ballantyne disturbs and terrifies?’
‘Of course she does. I just believe she’s capable of a lot more. For a start, whatever that little girl’s become, she can communicate.’
‘There’s a comforting thought,’ McClain said.
‘Take care, Nick,’ Ruthie said.
The Colony Trilogy Page 35