Not Dark Yet

by Peter Robinson

  “Probably.”

  “That you said it, or that you slept with him?”

  “Probably both. Back then Leka was a kind of fashionable sexy gangster. Like someone from a Guy Ritchie film. He was exciting to be around. And like Connor, he was young, sexy, devil-may-care. Liked to flash his money around. I was young and impressionable.”

  “So you slept with him?” Gerry repeated.

  “Yes. Probably.”

  “Could he have been Marnie’s father?”

  “Leka?” Charlotte looked away. “You must be joking.”

  “Why not?”

  “We took precautions.”

  “Doesn’t always work. Surely you must know that.”

  Charlotte pouted.

  “There’s no need to sulk,” said Annie. “Come on, get it off your chest. Tell us what you know.”

  Charlotte glanced at Jessica Bowen, who gave her a brief nod. Charlotte seemed to pull herself together, this time taking several deep breaths and relaxing as best she could in her hard chair. To Annie, she seemed like someone who was finally relieved to be unburdening herself. It happened often in interviews, just before the confession.

  “It’s true I knew them both back then,” Charlotte said. “Connor and Leka. The summer of 1999. I’d just turned twenty-one and the world was my oyster. Or so I thought. I had friends, money saved—not a fortune, but enough—and there were good times to be had. We spent most of May and the first part of June sailing the Greek islands—Samos, Santorini, Mykonos, Patmos, Rhodes, Kos—all this before the migrants, before they were the way they are now. And yes, there were lots of parties, sex parties, if you like. And drugs. Mostly cocaine. That’s why I was coming to hate working for Connor so much lately. I could see it starting all over again. It was all starting to remind me too much of my misspent youth, the bowls of white powder, the casual sex. I thought I’d put all that behind me.”

  “Yes, but you weren’t participating this time, were you?”

  Charlotte managed a brief smile. “No. But I was exposed to it. Somehow that seemed enough. And then Marnie came along.”

  “Another reminder?”

  “If you like. But a breath of fresh air, too. There was such an innocence about Marnie that’s hard to describe. She was no ingénue. I don’t mean that. She wasn’t naive. In many ways she seemed old beyond her years, but she had a special sort of aura. Connor picked up on it immediately.”

  “The first time she worked at one of his parties?”

  “Yes. Back in March. Nothing happened then, or I would have known, but I could see him when I dropped by, the way he looked at her. And he mentioned her later. I should have known what it meant, done something about it right away, but I didn’t. I don’t know why. Maybe because I was selfish. Maybe because I didn’t read the signs properly. It’s easier in hindsight. But I did warn her about Leka and Tadić. To stay away from them. Even before she started working for me. She said she wanted money, and the parties paid good money, but I warned her to just do her job and keep her distance and she’d be fine. The idea of rape never entered my mind. As far as I was concerned, they might be criminals, but none of them was a rapist. And when Connor sent me to Costa Rica, I was just so thrilled to be going somewhere I’d never been before that I never gave a moment’s thought as to what might happen while I was away. Or why I was being sent so far away. How could I know? But I didn’t kill anyone, honest I didn’t. You have to believe me.”

  “Go on. What happened next?”

  “I’d only been back a couple of days and Marnie came to my house. She was in a terrible state. Like I said, not so much physically—she’d cleaned herself up—but that innocence, that special aura was gone. She was empty, dead inside. She told me what had happened. That Connor had come to see her in the kitchen when most people had left or gone off to their rooms and it was quiet. He persuaded her to have a drink. She soon started to feel dizzy and sleepy and he helped her to a room where he said she could lie down and have a rest. But then he raped her. It was all a blur to her at the time, but she said she remembered the shock afterwards, the inability to move, just lying there as he did it to her. And when he’d finished, he drove her home, dropped her off outside her house.”

  “What about her own car?”

  “One of his minions must have picked it up the following day and dropped it off. She said Blaydon phoned and told her she got drunk, or she’d taken something, and he was worried, so that was why he drove her home.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “I tried to bring her out of it, but you were right earlier, she needed the kind of help that only an expert could give her. And I failed. I failed her.” Charlotte started crying silently and Jessica Bowen passed her a tissue. “Sorry,” Charlotte went on. “This is all very upsetting. I still can’t quite take in the news of Marnie’s death.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “She stayed with me in Adel. We spent some days together, talking, walking in the woods. She seemed to improve a bit. Then she went back to work, back in York, and after that I didn’t hear from her again. I’d suggested she go home to her parents and tell them what happened, and she said she would think about it. I suppose I was trying to pass the problem on.”

  “Did you know where her parents lived?”

  “No. Why would I?”

  “She didn’t tell you?”

  “I think she was protective of them. All I knew is it was somewhere down south. I kept thinking she might phone, but she didn’t.”

  “And you didn’t phone her?”

  “No. I had her mobile number, but no, I didn’t.”

  “Did she ever mention suicide?”

  “Good Lord, no.”

  “Or pregnancy?”

  “No. But how could she, really, if it had only just happened?”

  Annie paused. Charlotte had taken a hell of a bruising, from hearing about the suicide of her daughter to the dredging up of her own painful memories, but it wasn’t over yet. Never again would she have Charlotte in such a raw, vulnerable state, readier than ever, perhaps, to tell the whole truth, if only just to get out of there. “Charlotte,” she said. “Tell me the truth now. Did you kill Connor Clive Blaydon?”

  Charlotte looked her straight in the eye and said, “No. I didn’t.” Then she paused. “I wanted to, but I didn’t have the guts. Maybe I . . .”

  “So who did?” Annie asked. “Can you help us? Will you tell us?”

  Charlotte nodded. “Maybe I am responsible for what happened. I don’t know. But I invited Leka over to the house one evening after Marnie had left. I told him I wanted to talk to him about something important.” She paused, as if for some brief internal dialogue, shaking her head from side to side as if in judgement on herself, then hurried on. “I told him that Marnie was his daughter, from all those years ago, that time on Blaydon’s yacht. That I’d put her up for adoption but she had tracked me down and come to work for me. Now she wanted to know who her father was, maybe even meet him. I said I wanted to get his permission first, before I arranged anything. I thought he’d be angry and just say no, but he wasn’t. He didn’t. He knew who I meant. He’d seen her at Connor’s. Leka and I had had a bit of a fling back then, more than just a one-off, unlike Connor, at any rate. Never since. And he has become a bit of a pig. I meant what I said. But back then he was handsome, gallant, vicious. But never violent towards me. There’s not much point even saying this, but he could be gentle. He could be kind.”

  “Did he believe you?”

  “I think so. He knew I had no reason to lie to him. I made it clear that neither I nor Marnie wanted anything from him, not money, not commitment or anything, and he could just walk away if he wanted. He didn’t even need to acknowledge her as his daughter.”

  “Didn’t he ask for proof or anything?”

  “No. As I said, I wasn’t asking him for anything. I made it clear she’d had a good family. I told him I just wanted him to know, that’s all. He said he did wan
t to see her. He quite surprised me. He said I should have told him a long time ago, but it wasn’t too late. That he had a wonderful large mansion in the countryside outside of Tirana and all his daughters and granddaughters lived there. Marnie could come with him and join them, be part of his family. She would never want for anything again.”

  “What did you say?”

  “After I got over the shock, I said I didn’t think she’d be interested, that she would be happy where she was again once she . . . Anyway, he wouldn’t give up. He wanted to talk to her so he could try to persuade her to go to Albania.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  Charlotte turned away.

  “Charlotte?”

  Slowly, she looked up, tears in her eyes. “I made a mistake,” she said. “I gave him her mobile number.”

  Annie looked at Gerry. “The man she met on the cliffs,” she said. “The reason she was running.”

  “What?” Charlotte said.

  “Nothing. What else did you say?”

  Charlotte paused and glanced at Jessica Bowen, who whispered in her ear. Charlotte nodded and went on. “I told him that she was very upset. I told him what happened at the party. I told him that Blaydon had raped Marnie. Raped his daughter. Leka was already paranoid enough about Connor’s loyalty. It didn’t take much to push him over the edge. His men had also seen Connor talking to a policeman—Banks—who wasn’t on his payroll.”

  “And then?”

  “A few days later, Connor was dead. I honestly never imagined all this would happen. I thought they might beat him up or something, put him in hospital. He deserved that. And I was angry. I couldn’t think of any other way to get back at him. All right, so maybe I was a little bit crazy, too. Marnie absolutely refused to bring the police in. She said she knew what it was like for rape victims. I wasn’t strong or brave enough to do anything myself. I thought maybe this would work, if I stirred things up, that maybe Leka or his friends would beat Connor up or something. I never imagined that they’d murder him.”

  “And Marnie? Did Gashi tell you that he found her?”

  “No. I’ve no idea whether he ever met her. I never saw Marnie again, and I haven’t seen Leka since.”

  Annie wondered if what she was hearing was mere naiveté or whether she had been outflanked and outwitted. “That’s what Gashi is, Charlotte,” she said. “A killer. And we think he might have been to see Marnie in Dorset on the day she died. Maybe he told her he was her father and tried to persuade her to go to Albania with him. We don’t know, but she appeared to be running away from him. Witnesses saw a man getting into a posh silver car. Gashi drives a grey Mercedes. It’s close enough.”

  “He didn’t . . . ?”

  “No, he didn’t kill her. She took her own life, Charlotte. She jumped off a cliff.”

  “Because of him?”

  “I doubt it. Though I’m sure he contributed. If what you told me earlier is correct, I’d guess he was just putting the proposition to her.”

  “But he couldn’t force her, could he?”

  “Maybe. But I don’t think so. I think she was upset enough to start with because of the trauma of the rape, and the pregnancy. Gashi only increased her confusion. I imagine that she listened for a while, and when it all got too much for her, her resolve strengthened, and she ran. She didn’t want to hear any more. That’s why she was running when she reached Durdle Door. Not because he was going to harm her or anything. It was just all too much. She did what she had intended to do anyway.”

  Charlotte put her head in her hands.

  The Albanians, Annie thought. Dammit, it was the Albanians all along, even if not for the reasons she had thought. But she was right. And Charlotte’s crime? They called it “soliciting to murder,” and it could carry a life sentence. Gashi certainly wouldn’t be helping them, even if they could find him. He was hardly going to admit that Charlotte had more or less asked him to murder Blaydon and that he had done so. And it would be damn near impossible to prove anything; they would have their work cut out convincing the CPS that Charlotte had solicited Blaydon’s murder merely by telling Gashi about the rape, and that he was the girl’s father. Unless . . .

  “Is it true?” she asked softly. “Was Leka Gashi Marnie’s father?”

  Charlotte stared at her, wide-eyed, and said, “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Charlotte simply reached for another tissue and nodded.

  “Blaydon?”

  “No.”

  “Then who? Do you know?”

  “It was after I got back to Oxford,” she said. “The middle of July. There was an old boyfriend. His name doesn’t matter. We got too carried away to worry about precautions.”

  “But Marnie’s birthday was 15 March. You say you slept with Blaydon and Gashi in mid-June. That works out at exactly nine months from . . .” Annie put her hand to her mouth. “Oh, my God,” she said. “Marnie was a month premature, wasn’t she, born after only eight months?”

  “That’s right.”

  Annie looked at Gerry. “We should have known. Francine Sedgwick, Marnie’s mother, told us the baby they adopted had been born early, kept in the hospital a little longer than usual.”

  “Do what you want with me,” Charlotte said. “I don’t care any more. I’ve told you the truth and that’s all there is to it.”

  There was still “soliciting to murder,” which they might have a better chance of proving now that Charlotte admitted she had lied to Gashi about his being Marnie’s father, but even then, there were so many extenuating circumstances, the CPS might easily refuse to prosecute. All that remained was “wasting police time’ or “interfering in a police investigation” or “obstruction of justice”—lesser charges, but still serious. But it was unlikely that anything much would happen to Charlotte Westlake, Annie thought. And maybe that was all for the best. What would be the point in locking her up in prison? As was so often the case, she would probably be far harder on herself than the law would be on her. After all, she had been indirectly responsible for three deaths: Connor Clive Blaydon, Neville Roberts, and Marnie Sedgwick.

  Jessica Bowen was busy making notes, and Charlotte was lost in her own grief. Then Jessica glanced up at Annie, questioning.

  Annie just shrugged. “Later,” she said. “We’ll consider all the options. But later.”

  They gathered up their papers and left.

  20

  BANKS GOT BACK TO NEWHOPE COTTAGE AROUND SIX-thirty that evening, had a quick shower, and changed clothes. He picked up a bottle of Cahors from the rack, then he was ready to set off for Ray’s.

  After ringing Jean-Claude and finding out that there hadn’t been a hint or whisper about Zelda visiting Paris recently, he had spent the morning wandering the bookstalls beside the Seine on the Left Bank, where he had bought a hefty copy of À la recherche du temps perdu in the original French. He didn’t know why, as he hadn’t been able to get very far with it in English, but it had just seemed the thing to do. And it wasn’t very expensive. He also bought what he guessed was a reproduction of a sixties poster for Francoise Hardy’s debut studio album, Tous les garçons et les filles, the picture with the umbrella. She looked just like the woman he had seen on the Rue Montmartre with the four long-stemmed roses.

  He had no real news to give Ray, but at least he could try to keep his friend’s mind off his worries for a few hours. He sometimes felt a little guilty for contributing to Ray’s optimism about Zelda, when he had no definite idea where she was or what she was doing, but then he also believed that she might turn up one day, when things had blown over.

  He also had a vague idea where she might be, gleaned from the Moleskine notebook, and he thought he could probably track her down if he wanted to. But he would give her time to make the first move, if that was what she wanted to do. She would either return in her own time, or she wouldn’t. He had no idea if it was fear of arrest that was keeping her away. The file was still open on the two corpses in the burn
ed-out treatment plant, but given the lack of solid evidence, even that investigation would soon slow to a crawl.

  The weather was changing and it was a windy evening when Banks drove over to Lyndgarth listening to Rhiannon Giddens on the car stereo. He pulled up outside Windlee Farm halfway through “Little Margaret.” All seemed quiet there, except for the wind whistling around the buildings—no sixties rock blaring out of the open windows—but Ray’s car was in the drive, and it was unlikely he had gone anywhere without it. Banks walked up to the front door and rang the bell. Nothing. He knocked hard. Still nothing. Next, he walked around the property to see if Ray was in one of the outbuildings, Zelda’s studio, or even sitting on the edge of the moor contemplating sketching, as he often did. But he wasn’t there, either.

  He went back and tried the front door. It creaked open. Ray never was much of a one for security, he remembered, and without Zelda’s recent paranoia to drive him, he had reverted to old habits. However, Banks was certain that even Ray would have locked up if he had gone out. There was no smell of food cooking, which was also odd. Banks decided that Ray was either in a deep, alcohol-induced sleep or he was so lost in his work he wasn’t paying attention to anything else. He put the wine bottle down and prowled around the downstairs rooms, kitchen, den, living room. Where was Ray? Banks suddenly felt a chill of fear run up his spine. Had they come back? Whoever was left of the gang that had taken Zelda. Had they come back to take revenge on Ray for her escape? But there were no signs of any disruption. At least, not downstairs.

  Banks called out Ray’s name but got only silence in return. There were no lights on and the downstairs was in shadow. Banks opened the cellar door, flicked on the light switch and went down. Nothing there. Next, he headed for the staircase. As soon as he got to the bottom, he froze. He could see a shape there, a bulk, right at the top, and there was a hand hanging over the first step.

  He took the stairs two at a time and knelt by Ray’s motionless body, laid two fingers on the carotid artery in his neck. No pulse. The skin was cold, and when he turned on the light he could see discoloration already beginning to affect the flesh. Banks fell back against the wall and slid down, knees together, and held his head in his hands. It couldn’t be. Ray dead? Just like that.