Cause of Death

by Jane A. Adams

‘There’s something big going down between Haines and another major player. It’s possible Karen is mixed up in that somehow. Haines wanted Stan to go after her, to—’

  ‘Kill her?’ George laughed. ‘Like that’s really going to happen.’

  ‘Stan refused, so Haines threatened to get to Karen through you. I’m sorry, George, but I really think—’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I could—’

  ‘Make me?’ George halted and swung round to face Mac. ‘Look, if he’s after me he’ll get to me wherever. You know that as well as I do. I’m tired of running, Mac. I did it most of my life and I’m not doing it now. Haines wants me he can come and get me, but I’m not hiding out just because I happen to be someone’s son or someone’s brother.’

  The teenagers walked on stiff-backed and Mac followed them.

  ‘George, you have to think about other people. You could be putting others at risk.’

  He was not prepared for the surge of anger which George turned on him.

  ‘Don’t you try and blackmail me. Don’t you try and make me feel bad. You don’t have a clue, do you, don’t know a fucking thing about me. I grew up being blackmailed. With people forcing me to do what they wanted. My dad used his fists, but my mum was just as bad, kept me just as scared, and Karen. Karen . . .’ He broke off and Mac could see that he was fighting tears. ‘Always bloody Karen.’

  Ursula had hold of him, her arms tight around him as George hid his face in her shoulder, his entire body shaking. She did not even look at Mac.

  Slowly, George calmed and pulled away. Ursula laid her hands against his cheeks, cupping his face. He leaned towards her, forehead resting on hers as she wiped tears away. Mac stood apart, at a loss and completely excluded. He wanted to tell them that it would all be OK, that in the end everything could turn out right, but he didn’t want to be caught in a lie.

  ‘George, I’m sorry,’ Mac said.

  ‘I think you should go,’ Ursula told him, but there was no anger in her voice, just more sorrow, Mac thought, than any girl of fifteen should ever have to know.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Andy had gone home and changed his clothes, looked to see what he had in his fridge and decided he didn’t fancy any of it. He needed to get out for a bit, he decided, and found himself on the coast road heading back towards Frantham. He drove past the turn off for the town and out towards the half-dozen houses where Ted Eebry lived and pulled over on to the grass verge a few hundred yards shy of the crescent.

  For several minutes Andy sat undecided, fingers tapping at the steering wheel and his mind on the conversation he’d had with Miriam and with Kath’s old friends. It had sort of clarified things but also added to his unease. Finally he got out and took a well-remembered path across the fields to where the gardens backed on to the farmland.

  The wildlife pond was still there, scummy and overgrown now and not as big or as deep as he remembered it, though it had been a dry summer, he supposed. He wondered if any of the local kids played here now, came dipping with their nets and those funny little jars with the magnifying glasses on the top they all seemed to have back then.

  Thinking about it, he seemed to remember Ted being the one that had brought them to the pond. Funny how the mind played tricks and memories faded into the background, only to return with almost vicious intensity. He’d not given much thought to the Eebry family in years – apart from his regular online conversations with Gail, that was – but now memories of Ted and the girls had come flooding back; it seemed they had permeated his childhood and teenage years without him knowing it or appreciating their significance.

  He wished he’d called all this to mind before and not had these memories thrust upon him under such lousy circumstances.

  Andy pushed through nettles that seemed set on world domination, and past the brambles, competing for the same honour and loaded with black fruit that stained his hands purple when he pushed them aside. He should have brought a bag, like he used to when he gathered blackberries for his mum. Moments later he was standing at the far end of Ted Eebry’s garden and asking himself what the hell he was doing here.

  From the back, Ted’s house looked flat and very ordinary, but the garden was anything but. Close to the house it was all flowers and a lawn the girls had played on. There’d been a swing and climbing frame for a while. A paddling pool on hot days. Then a trellis screen covered with roses and clematis that divided the garden and a second screen that hid a bank of three compost bins and the potting shed. Andy could remember Ted’s regime of turning and aerating until he’d produced a soft and good-smelling loam.

  Two small greenhouses sat either side of the path and then a bit of a rock garden, a low hedge and then what Ted called his allotment. His kitchen garden, regimented and fruitful and, Andy could see now, planned with the greatest care: tall rows of beans, lower canes supporting peas, the fruit cage that protected the raspberries from the predations of birds. Another little potting shed and a compost heap close to the boundary where the newts were reputed to live and which was often overgrown with grass and weeds in summer. The one untidy spot in this entire large and lovely space.

  Andy stared at the offending pile of leaves and vegetation slowly converting back into friable earth. There was no sign of a disturbance or use. Brambles from the field boundary had begun a slow incursion, as had the nettles, standing shoulder high atop the mound, but there was no sign of burial or exhumation.

  Andy felt momentary relief and then reminded himself that the theory was that the bones had been moved long before now. After the flesh had rotted away, they had been moved and preserved before eventually some had been dumped at the dig site.

  Or was he getting this completely wrong?

  Keeping out of the sightline of the house, an easy task in such a fertile, blowsy location, Andy crossed to the second little potting shed and went inside. It was all very familiar. The scent of compost and stored onions, the bench under the windows with seed trays stacked beneath and different grades of garden riddle hanging from the hooks on the rear wall.

  Andy leaned against the bench and stared at them. Five in all, two very old and rusty, the others newer but still showing signs of long use. He could remember Ted using them, getting just the right fineness for his pots and trays, sifting out the remaining roots and the odd stone from his home-made compost.

  Andy turned away and let himself out, wanting to believe that everything would be all right now. Nothing was amiss and there was nothing left to find.

  Then something caught his eye as he pushed back through the undergrowth close beside the boundary hedge. Andy bent and picked it up. It was small, palm-sized, and rusted almost through. Very fragile, but Andy knew it was part of another soil riddle from Ted’s garden.

  He searched his pockets for something he could put the object into and in the end had to make do with a couple of tissues wrapped carefully around the jagged wire.

  He just knew it would be a match.

  Andy remained crouched on the ground, breathing deep the scent of warm earth and blackberries and listening to the sound of bees and buzzing, and was in half a mind to leave the object where it lay. To let all this go.

  Slowly, Andy got to his feet and, tissue-wrapped evidence held gingerly in his hand, walked back to his car.

  THIRTY-TWO

  George hadn’t said much on the way home, and once they’d got out of the minibus he’d gone straight to his room. Ursula was due to help in the kitchen, getting dinner ready. All the kids took a turn with helping out; Cheryl said it was good for them. Ursula knew it wasn’t just about the cooking; it was a chance for a private chat with one or other of their carers and key workers without it seeming odd or attracting attention from the other kids. She wondered if Mac had already contacted Hill House, but apparently he had not. Cheryl didn’t say anything. She asked what sort of day they’d had and how Ursula was coping with the workload, and then the twins appeared and asked how long until dinner and she got distracted.


  Ursula managed to respond in ways she knew Cheryl would find appropriate. Cheryl was proud that ‘her’ kids were doing well at school. Ursula knew the statistics: kids in care mostly left without much in the way of exam results. Her smile when Ursula told her she was coping OK, and thought George was too, was genuine.

  ‘And are you feeling OK?’ Cheryl asked, and Ursula knew she was talking about her dad.

  She nodded, and then shook her head. ‘Not really, but I guess it would be a bit weird if I was,’ she said.

  Cheryl nodded sympathetically and Ursula knew she’d said the right thing. And it was the truth. She didn’t really know how she felt.

  George was quiet at dinner too, but then he rarely said much anyway. The twins were down to help out with the washing up so Ursula and George took their homework and retreated to the conservatory.

  ‘Do you think we should tell Cheryl?’

  George shrugged. ‘Tell her what?’ He sounded so weary. She sat down next to him and took his hand. ‘I just want to be left alone,’ he said. ‘I just want . . .’

  ‘Yeah, I know.’ Ursula didn’t know what else to say.

  ‘Maybe I should just run away, you know. I could do it, I’ve had enough bloody practice.’

  ‘Only if I can come with you.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  They sat in silence, looking out at the dusk. The sky out at sea was bruised and black and heavy. Maybe there’d be a storm. The view from his window was fantastic when there was a storm out at sea. He could sit on his bed and watch the lightning, feel the chill as the rain lashed against his window and still be warm in bed. Still know that he wouldn’t suddenly be woken in the night and have to run out into the rain with whatever they could grab, scared for their lives.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘We stop here and we face up to what comes. Whatever it is.’

  He felt her nod and for a while they sat in silence, looking out at the changing sky.

  ‘Do you think I might be like him?’ she asked.

  George knew she meant her dad.

  ‘I get scared sometimes, when I feel down and everything gets too much, that I might be like him. That I might end up in a place like that. I’m scared of that, George.’

  ‘You think I don’t worry about that sort of stuff?’ George demanded. ‘My mum killed herself. My dad was a violent bastard and my sister is a complete psycho.’

  ‘Yeah, but she loves you,’ Ursula protested. She giggled awkwardly.

  ‘And I love her too,’ George admitted, ‘and I miss her like you wouldn’t believe, but I can’t be like her or live like her or do like she wants me to do any more. I told her that. I’ve got to be me and you’ve just got to be you and if other people don’t like it, well, fuck them all.’

  ‘Fuck them all,’ Ursula agreed.

  George laughed. ‘Sounds silly when you swear,’ he said. ‘You sound too posh.’ He paused. Leaned in close to Ursula. The two of them rarely kissed, rarely did anything really intimate, and George knew they were the butt of a lot of jokes and innuendo because few people could figure out their relationship. He and Ursula understood one another though. They were neither of them ready for anything more just yet. George was only just getting used to being able to touch someone or be touched without feeling scared.

  Before Ursula, there had only been Karen when it came to hugs or any kind of physical comfort. He’d always felt at ease with her.

  He missed his sister so much it hurt, but he knew he couldn’t have her back, not if he wanted to keep the new stuff that he’d gained.

  ‘We’ve just got to let them go, don’t we?’

  Ursula nodded. ‘I can’t go and see him again. I just can’t. I’ve not lived with him since I was five years old. I hardly know him. No one tells my mum she’s got to go back to him. She’s free to go off somewhere with someone else and everyone just says it’s because she couldn’t cope with it, like it’s OK. But me, I’m his daughter and everyone wants—’

  ‘Screw what they want. We’ve got to do what we want.’ He laughed awkwardly. ‘And you know what I want just now? I want to get my grades and maybe go to college and . . . and then I don’t know.’

  ‘How square are you?’ It was a Cheryl phrase.

  ‘No one says square.’

  ‘Cheryl does.’ Ursula laughed again and this time it was a real, honest, humorous sound.

  George clasped her hand tight, glad she was there, and wishing Karen well, wherever she was, yet at the same time hoping she’d stay well out of the way.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Jerry had taken a big risk and called his handler again, slipping away for a few minutes when the others were ordering drinks in the hotel bar.

  Calling from his room was out of the question. Haines picked up the tab for all of the accommodation and checked the phone calls assiduously. His mobile phone was billed direct to one of Haines’s shell corporations – Jerry was on the payroll as a security consultant – and an unusual number, one not on Haines’s approved list, would automatically be looked into; Haines employed people solely for that task. He’d risked keeping a cheap backup phone for a while, but Haines was given to ordering lightning searches, which he personally attended. He’d had a man thrown overboard for making unauthorized calls, or so Jerry had been told, and the use of public phones was on Haines’s list of forbidden things.

  It was, as someone had once commented, well out of his hearing, like living with the KGB.

  Jerry was of the opinion that they might actually have been more forgiving.

  The only time in recent history that he’d been free of such restrictions had been those few days in France. So why had he come back?

  He’d come back because Haines would move heaven and earth to find him had he not. Jerry had thought about faking his own death, but that took resources he couldn’t assemble in a hurry, and besides, there were others at risk should he betray his master.

  Haines had a way of finding out whom and what you cared about. Haines knew he was an ex-copper, apparently thrown out on his ear for misappropriation of certain substances that should have remained in the evidence locker. He employed Jerry in part because of the connections he still had, and as for the rest, well, just because he had divorced his wife – or, to be precise, she had divorced him – it didn’t mean he wanted her dead.

  Most people, in Jerry’s experience, had someone they’d rather remain alive and intact. There were few exceptions. Santos, maybe. Jerry couldn’t think of anyone Santos cared about.

  Checking that the others were engrossed in conversation, he headed off towards the gents, then swung right and crossed the lobby to a small office he had spotted a few days earlier and which seemed to be unoccupied for much of the day. He hoped it had an outside line. He closed the door until just a crack remained and grabbed the cordless phone. His relief when he got a dial tone was overwhelming. He dialled fast, got through. ‘You got my message?’

  ‘I got it. What the hell are you playing at?’

  ‘Trying to stay alive.’

  ‘Jerry, listen to me, I can’t do anything for you yet. Things are moving fast. We’ve got new intel—’

  ‘I don’t give a damn. Look, you’ve got to get me out now. We’re leaving tomorrow, going back to that blasted boat of his. It’s now or—’

  ‘Hang in there. Just a few more days. A couple of weeks at most.’

  Jerry had heard that so many times before.

  ‘Fuck you,’ Jerry said. ‘Fuck the lot of you.’

  He hung up and stared at the phone as though he could lay the blame there. He was on his own, he knew it now. On his own.

  He replaced the phone and returned to the bar, claimed his drink.

  ‘Where did you get to?’ Santos said. ‘We were about to send out a search party.’

  Tomas laughed and handed Jerry his drink.

  He was on his own now, Jerry knew that for certain. They’d just abandoned him, hung him out to dry. He raised his glass in a mock toast. �
��Old friends,’ he said, aware that Santos was watching him.

  ‘He’s losing his nerve and frankly I can’t say I blame him.’

  ‘You think he’ll blow his cover?’

  ‘No, never that. He knows what that would mean. I’ve told him two more weeks at most and this time we have to mean that. I’m not standing aside and watching more broken promises. We should have pulled him out long before this.’

  ‘He knew what the risks were.’

  ‘Risks for six months, not three years.’

  ‘Oh, come off it, the effort we’d put into creating his legend, he knew it would be for longer than that. The man isn’t a complete fool.’

  ‘Isn’t he? He said yes to us, didn’t he?’ Didcott stubbed out his cigarette. ‘If you want him to be alive long enough to testify then we need to give him a way out and we need to do it fast, before he takes matters into his own hands, whatever the risk. You can only use people for so long before they rebel and, believe me, Jerry is on the verge of that rebellion.’

  THIRTY-FOUR

  It was late when Karen phoned Peverill Lodge. The household had retired to bed, all except Stan, who was still having trouble getting up the stairs. It took him a while to reach the phone, but he got there on the eighth ring.

  ‘Ah,’ Karen said. ‘Mr Holden.’

  ‘Miss Parker. Or is it Miss Munroe?’

  ‘Whatever. Has Rina gone to bed? She sent me a message.’

  ‘You want me to get her?’ His heart sank at the thought of struggling up the stairs.

  ‘No. I think you might do. Now what’s been happening, Stan the man? I hear you’ve been having a spot of bother.’

  Stan made his way back to the living room and eased himself on to the sofa. He told her what had occurred with Haines and what threats he had made. ‘Mac said he’d take care of George,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, Mac is it now? You friends with a policeman, Stan? That’s a bit of a turn up, isn’t it?’

  Stan didn’t rise to the bait. ‘So what should we do?’ he said.