The Mayfly: The chilling thriller that will get under your skin

by James Hazel

  ‘The desk. Where’s the footprint? Not one grain of dirt, anywhere. He didn’t climb on the desk.’

  McEwen paused. ‘Priest, why don’t you leave the detecting to the detectives?’ His red face had darkened.

  ‘Are you saying this wasn’t suicide?’ Jessica asked.

  ‘Over half of all suicides in the UK are carried out by hanging or suffocation,’ Priest told her, ‘and it’s more common among men than women. Although it’s cumbersome, it’s popular because it is the cleanest and most pain-free way to die and most people don’t have access to firearms. But hanging seems an odd choice when there is a perfectly well-stocked gun rack in the corner.’

  Priest gestured to the glass gun cabinet behind Wren’s swaying body. While McEwen went over to examine the shotguns inside, Priest managed to take a couple of quick photographs of the scene.

  ‘Where’s Lady Wren?’ Priest asked, pocketing his phone just as McEwen turned around. ‘I want to see Terri.’

  *

  In the oak-panelled library, Priest found Terri Wren sitting with a shawl over her knees in a large leather chair. He knelt down so his head was level with hers. He couldn’t remember the last time he had seen her, but her hair, once a sandy colour, was now streaked with grey.

  ‘Terri,’ Priest murmured.

  Her eyes were wet and dark. She barely glanced at him but seemed to know who he was. ‘Charlie. What are you –’

  ‘I’m with the police. It’s complicated . . . but I’m helping out.’

  ‘That’s good. They need all the help they can get.’

  ‘I’m so sorry . . .’

  She held up her hand and turned away. His words fell short instantly.

  ‘There’s no need, Charlie. It’s Hayley I’m crying for. Not me.’

  He nodded. ‘I know.’

  She turned towards him. He resisted the temptation to look away. He knew that was what people would do to her for the rest of her life – look away. So he did her the courtesy of holding her gaze.

  ‘I don’t know what Philip had got himself into, Charlie. Maybe if your father had still been alive he might have been able to save him. He was a wonderful man. Even Philip, as pig-headed as he was sometimes, saw that.’

  Priest touched her hand gently. ‘What happened here, Terri?’ he asked softly.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, pulling her shawl tight around her. There was a quiver in her voice. She seemed so fragile that she might shatter into a thousand pieces at any moment.

  Priest found himself holding his breath when she spoke.

  ‘You know Philip. He had his work, his precious work. It took him so far away from here – away from me – that I barely knew him. But for him to . . . do this? I just can’t believe it.’

  ‘My father once mentioned an old Japanese proverb that Philip told him about.’

  ‘Yes! I know it well. Fall seven times, stand up eight.’ Terri paused. ‘You see. Philip wasn’t the sort to . . . you know.’

  Priest bowed his head. ‘Where’s Hayley, Terri?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she whispered. ‘She hasn’t been in touch for a week or so but that isn’t unusual. I tried ringing earlier but she didn’t answer. I’m sure she’s just out, or at that church of hers. Or maybe she has a man she doesn’t want me to know about.’

  Priest nodded. Something was nagging at him – something more than the body in the study.

  ‘Is someone coming to be with you, Terri?’

  ‘My sister. She lives in Wiltshire. On a farm.’

  Priest nodded. ‘And Hayley?’

  ‘She’ll turn up. She always does.’

  ‘Terri, did Philip –’ Priest hesitated. Did Philip what? This wasn’t the time, nor was it fair to say anything to Terri that might suggest there was anything for her to be worried about above and beyond the death of her husband.

  ‘Charlie? Did Philip what?’ She looked at him, alarm registering in her eyes.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, giving her hand a squeeze. ‘It’s nothing.’

  Priest could hear the floorboards creaking in the next room. McEwen was pacing the hallway. Counting down the five minutes he had allowed Priest.

  ‘One minute more, Priest, that’s all,’ he called into the room.

  ‘Terri, if there’s anything I can do . . .’

  She smiled, although her watery eyes looked straight through him. ‘You were always a good boy, Charlie. I know Philip thought so much of you. He had this crazy notion, you know. About you and Hayley . . .’

  ‘Terri . . .’

  ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I’ll be fine. You should go.’

  ‘Perhaps you could ask your sister to contact me when Hayley turns up.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Priest got up slowly. When he got to the doorway, Terri called after him.

  ‘Charlie?’

  He turned.

  ‘Thank you for coming.’

  He nodded. His head was pounding.

  Priest closed the door on Terri Wren.

  ‘Did she –’ Jessica was waiting outside, just out of McEwen’s earshot.

  ‘No. She doesn’t know anything.’

  She nodded, disappointed. ‘We ought to go. I think we’ve outstayed our welcome.’

  She was right. McEwen had spotted Priest emerging from the library and was bustling up the corridor with a thunderous glare. A couple of his men lurked in the background – they looked shambolic, loitering in the corridor without direction or purpose. Priest swallowed back the urge to shout at them.

  ‘OK, enough, Priest. I’m not playing your game anymore. You clearly know more about this than you’re letting on,’ McEwen spluttered.

  ‘Has anyone contacted Wren’s daughter, Hayley?’

  ‘What’s that got to do with you?’ McEwen demanded.

  ‘Have you contacted her? Terri said she hadn’t been in touch in a week or so and now she can’t get hold of her.’

  ‘If it hasn’t escaped your attention, Priest, you’re not a copper anymore. You’re an ambulance chaser.’

  ‘McEwen, listen. Philip Wren did not kill himself. You need to be taking this seriously –’

  ‘You need to learn to keep your fucking nose out of my business, Priest,’ the Scot growled.

  Priest clenched his fists. He was a good head taller than McEwen and the thought of punching him in the face was tempting. He buried the feeling quickly. The boundary between reality and the unreal void that disassociation sufferers inhabit was a thin veil and some days Priest was never quite sure which side of the veil he was on. He wondered if William had ever had the same thought. The idea scared him. Was that all that separates us? A thin veil?

  ‘Priest?’ Jessica prompted.

  He shook off the mist that was enveloping him. Jessica was looking at him – her dark eyes curious and sharp.

  He turned back to McEwen. ‘It’s not about your business, McEwen,’ he said, calmly. ‘Finding Hayley Wren should be your priority.’

  McEwen waved his hand dismissively. ‘Fuck off, Priest. We’ll do our job. Which right now might involve arresting you for obstruction.’

  ‘You need to act on fact, not assumption, McEwen. Hayley Wren . . .’

  ‘Are you telling me how to do my job?’

  ‘Yes, I am,’ said Priest, feeling his anger start to gain control.

  The purple veins in McEwen’s neck stood out angrily. He had removed his jacket and, despite the chill in the air, there were large patches of moisture under his arms. He made to say something but the words appeared to stick in his throat. Priest felt a hand around his arm as Jessica led him to the door.

  ‘As I said, we’ve outstayed our welcome,’ she breathed in his ear.

  *

  Priest drove Jessica back to pick up her Range Rover. She had reverted to avoiding his eyes. He spent the journey turning occasionally, trying to remember what her face looked like when it wasn’t obscured by her hair.
r />   They had exchanged a few disjointed sentences.

  ‘Do you know Hayley well?’ Jessica asked.

  ‘Not really. From my childhood mainly, and a few meetings when I was in my early teens. She was nice enough,’ Priest replied.

  ‘Not your type?’

  ‘My colleague Okoro says I don’t have a type.’

  By the time they got back to the underground car park, the temperature had dropped to close to freezing. Priest expected Jessica to get out of the car as soon as they had stopped but she stayed put, pulling her coat tightly around her when he turned the engine off.

  ‘Does this change anything?’ she asked.

  He thought for a moment. ‘Philip Wren sent me a letter to my office saying that he had sent a package to my home containing a flash drive which your brother, who later turns up murdered, was looking for. Our chances of finding out what Philip has to do with this have diminished considerably.’

  ‘I meant my father’s instructions to you, to your firm.’

  ‘Ah, I see.’ Priest scratched his head.

  She shuffled in her seat. She had her hands clasped over her lap, her eyes fixed on the dashboard.

  ‘No. It changes nothing,’ he said, finally.

  She nodded and he watched her walk away across the car park. He had no idea whether she was disappointed or not.

  18

  The bar was not the sort of establishment that Priest habitually frequented. For one thing it was too loud. They were playing the Beastie Boys’ ‘Sabotage’. It was bad enough that the choice of background music arbitrarily switched from Shania Twain to Placebo in a heartbeat. Having to listen to it at over a hundred decibels was unforgivable.

  It was their monthly catch-up and Sarah’s turn to choose the venue. To try to stimulate his enthusiasm she had referred to it as a ‘trendy wine bar’, but this had turned out to be a disappointing misrepresentation.

  ‘It’s a student dive,’ he complained on arrival.

  ‘They do two-for-one on shots.’

  ‘Sarah, I haven’t had a shot since my last tetanus jab.’

  She laughed and sat him down in a booth with a couple of bottles of beer. As usual, she talked and he listened. He liked that – it meant he didn’t have to put much effort in himself and he liked to hear about her life. It reminded him how dysfunctional he was, but that was good – he needed to hear that sometimes. Her monologue, or at any rate as much of it as he could hear, drifted pleasantly: Tilly was doing well at school, her company had had a decent quarter but they might have to shed one of the agents next month as part of the cutbacks. Ryan was still a jobless deadbeat.

  ‘Have you seen William recently, Charlie?’

  ‘A little. He asks about you.’

  ‘How is he?’

  ‘You know. Mental.’

  That was the extent of any discussion regarding William and, although Priest had no objection to talking about it, he knew that Sarah was asking for his benefit, not because she had any genuine interest. Through this ritual, Sarah afforded Priest the courtesy of acknowledging William’s existence, and Priest afforded her the courtesy of a brief reply.

  Sarah bought the next round and pushed a bottle of San Miguel across the table towards him. She had settled for a tall glass of some green liquid that he didn’t recognise. She took the cocktail umbrella out of her drink and slotted it into the top of his beer bottle.

  ‘Remember that girl I mentioned the other day?’

  ‘No, Sarah. I don’t remember,’ he lied.

  ‘Don’t be facetious, Charlie. You’re an awful bore when you’re like that.’

  He laughed and took a swig of the beer, poking himself in the forehead with the cocktail umbrella. ‘I’m not interested.’

  ‘Charlie, I’ve forgotten how long ago your divorce was but it seems like decades. Have you seen any girls since?’

  He shrugged. ‘A few.’ Another lie of course, but she didn’t question it.

  ‘I just don’t get you.’ Sarah sighed.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, you’re wealthy, charming, a successful professional. Not as good-looking as me but not that ugly, either.’ She smiled mischievously, sipping her green drink through a straw.

  ‘I’m a social retard. Charming is quite an overstatement.’

  She weighed it up. ‘That’s true. And you have that thing that sometimes makes you see people with fish heads and shit.’

  ‘Mm. You’re right, Sarah. My bachelor status is the single most baffling question since the discovery of dark matter. With my painful antisocialism, lack of cultural awareness, mental illness and obsession with old zombie films, I’m quite a catch.’

  Sarah laughed their mother’s wonderfully warm laugh. ‘OK. Nobody’s perfect but, for the record, can you let me know what the actual problem is?’

  ‘You really want to know?’

  She leant across the table with her chin resting on her hands. ‘Please.’

  ‘Well, it’s just that . . . a lot of your friends suck.’

  She kicked him under the table and they burst into fits of giggles. For a moment it was as if they were children again and all the problems of the world suddenly evaporated. It might have gone on, had so many things not been playing on Priest’s mind.

  ‘Do you remember Philip Wren?’ he asked, suddenly.

  She screwed up her face as if she had sucked a lemon. ‘Yes. I remember he was a pig. Why are you changing the subject?’

  ‘He’s dead.’

  She swallowed a little too much green drink and had to swallow twice to gulp it down. ‘Oh. I’m sorry. How?’

  Priest clicked his tongue. ‘He hanged himself.’

  He had thought she might have been shocked, but she just looked away, running her hand across her chin. ‘That’s awful.’ She said it more to herself than him.

  ‘You’re not still in contact with Hayley, are you?’

  ‘We have a Facebook relationship, I guess. I don’t meet up with her.’

  That didn’t mean much. Sarah knew almost everyone through Facebook. Something else they didn’t share.

  ‘Been in touch with her recently?’

  ‘No. Her page is weird. Lots of references from the Bible. I think she found Jesus at some point. You know what I mean? You drift around a bit. Hate your parents. Get used to not fitting in. Never have any luck with boys. Then you’re sucked into a dogma that you kind of know is flawed but it gives you a little comfort and before you know it, you’re singing hallelujah with the God Squad.’

  ‘Wow, what happened to my sister? The non-judgemental one?’

  ‘Mm. Do you believe in God?’

  ‘I used to be indifferent, I suppose. If there was a God, then he was just as likely to be a very talented computer programmer as an omnipresent super-being. But then I thought about the victims and, somehow, it seemed wrong of me to believe in God.’

  The victims. Priest meant the people William had killed. He knew who they were, their faces, everything about them. He had spent months studying them, trying to make sense of it all. But he had never once been able to utter their names out loud. They were just . . . the victims.

  ‘Why aren’t you allowed to believe in God?’ Sarah asked, intrigued.

  ‘Because if there is a God, and he or she stood back and did nothing while William did what he did, then that’s fucking scary. So it’s probably better just to not believe.’

  She nodded, reached across and gave his hand a squeeze. ‘Amen, Reverend.’

  The music changed again. Feeder, ‘Feeling a Moment’. His hand was cold from clinging to the beer bottle.

  ‘Why did Philip hang himself, do you think?’ she asked him.

  ‘I don’t know. Pressure of the job, maybe.’

  ‘So sad.’

  ‘Mm. Well, if there is a God, I doubt he has space for another lawyer in Paradise.’

  ‘What do you mean another lawyer?’ Sarah grinned.

  19

  26th Marc
h, 1946

  A remote farm in middle England

  Heavy blobs of rain pelted down the Austin’s windshield. It was almost too much for the flimsy wipers to cope with and Ruck had to lean forward with his nose as close to the glass as he could get it just to see a few yards ahead. Tyres crunched over the courtyard gravel. He intended to leave the farm behind him for the evening. Schneider might be a prisoner there but he certainly wasn’t. There was a town a few miles south. Perhaps a chip shop, or a pub maybe.

  The figure came out of nowhere. A flash of red. He hit the brakes. The Austin’s wheels lost traction for a moment before coming to a stop. Ruck grabbed his hat and got out. The wind blew the rain into his face. He cursed under his breath as the icy water hit him. He had to half shout to be heard over the noise.

  ‘Hey, what!’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Colonel Ruck,’ Eva Miller shouted back. She was soaked from head to toe. Her hair, which had been immaculately curled earlier, now fell limply around her shoulders. The red coat she was wearing – which did not look cheap – seemed to have shrivelled up.

  ‘What on earth are you doing out here in this weather?’ Ruck asked.

  Perhaps a gentleman would have rushed round, taken his coat off, flung it over her. Ushered her inside. The thought crossed Ruck’s mind but he just stood there, getting as drenched as she was.

  ‘I was trying to find the kitchen,’ she explained. ‘Now I’m afraid I can’t find which door leads me to my room. They’re all locked.’

  Ruck faltered: it was unlikely she had already lost her bearings but the rain was relentless and she was soaked to the skin.

  ‘Get in,’ he instructed.

  They both climbed into the Austin. Eva closed the door and threw her head back against the seat in relief. Ruck flung his hat on the back seat. Patting his soaking coat, he pulled out the piece of paper hidden in the inside pocket to check it was undamaged. Fortunately, Schneider’s formula was still legible. He had considered where to keep the paper but he didn’t trust the guards not to snoop, and there was no safe in his room. The most secure place for the formula was with him.

  Seeing Eva watching, he hastily stuffed it back in his pocket.

  As he drove round to the back of the farm, it crossed his mind that she must have known how to get to her room – they had been here two nights now. Perhaps the storm and the dark had disorientated her. ‘Here.’ He stopped the car. ‘The door will be locked. Fitzgerald will let you in. Just knock and call for him.’