“Something like that. The money’s gone, now, but at least I’ve picked up the trail again. I should be able to trace what happened to it—it’s a huge sum of money, so it’s not easy to hide.”
Doyle made a sound of derision. “Trust the DCS to be up to his eyeballs in it—and that would explain his sudden conversion, too. The evangelicals are famous for raisin’ bushels of money at
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the drop of a hat, so it’s the perfect cover for movin’ large sums around.” She paused, thinking about the DCS, who’d also crossed swords with Acton, and had come up well short. “Will they prosecute him?”
“It depends on what we find. I’ll keep you posted, but in the meantime, keep it under your hat.”
“Right. Well, that’s good gossip, DI Williams, and I’m much obliged.”
He turned off the stove, and scraped the eggs onto his plate. “I’ve another one I’ve got to keep as quiet as I can. A spite murder—man was groin-shot.”
“Wife,” Doyle guessed immediately. A groin-shot was usually administered by someone who was familiar with that area.
“No; he’s never married. But here’s the fun part—he was a Health Professions Council member.” He shot her yet another significant glance.
“Oh-ho,” she said, raising her brows. “The plot thickens, it does.” The council members had been involved in the corruption rig, but there hadn’t been enough evidence to go after any of them. That, and there was the obvious problem in going after such worthy public servants; any case would have to be airtight.
Their discussion was interrupted when the concierge buzzed to say that Mathis and Emile had returned from Wexton Prison, and were looking to come up.
“Brilliant,” said Williams, sitting down with his eggs.
“Be nice,” Doyle warned. “She’s doin’ the work of the angels, takin’ Emile to see his Papa.”
“Savoie is not his Papa,” Williams advised, in between bites. “That whole situation seems a little smoky, to me.”
Doyle had to concede that this was a fair point—that Solonik’s son had been taken in by an underworld rival in the first place, not to mention that the boy was currently living the
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high life, here at castle Acton. “I know. But Savoie does love him, Thomas—I am certain of it.”
He glanced up at her. “Just be careful, Kath.”
“‘Careful’ is my middle name,” she teased, as she walked over to get the door. “You—of all people—must know that.”
He gave her a look, as Lizzie and Emile made their entrance—Emile immediately running over to greet Williams and inquire if there were any more eggs.
“I’ll make more,” he agreed with good grace, pushing his chair out. “How hungry are you?”
“I’ll do it,” Lizzie offered, taking off her coat. “And I’ll see if there’s bacon, or sausage.”
“You shouldn’t wait on us,” Williams protested. “It’s not PC.” “I like to cook—I do it all the time, at Trestles,” she countered. “I don’t care if it’s not PC. How about you, Lady
Acton?”
“I’ll pass, Lizzie. What did Savoie have to say for himself?” “My Papa says we will go home soon,” Emile disclosed
excitedly. “I have to be patient.”
“That’s you,” Doyle agreed. “‘Patient’ is your middle name.” “I don’t speak much with Mr. Savoie; instead, I sit in the
waiting area during their visit,” Mathis explained. “Although I complained about one of the guards, who was a little too friendly.”
Because Williams looked as though he was winding up to make a smart remark, Doyle hastily observed, “The guards there are awful. Cheeky, and full of themselves.”
“You’ve been to Wexton?” Williams asked with some surprise.
“Yes—in connection with the corruption case,” Doyle answered vaguely. In truth, she’d gone on an off-the-record visit with Solonik, whilst he was being held there. She’d been hoping to ferret out the Russian’s evil plans, but instead, she’d walked—
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like an idiot—straight into a trap, which went to show you that she should keep her off-the-record activities to a bare minimum.
“One of the Wexton Prison matrons was a player in the corruption rig,” Williams explained, for Mathis’ benefit. “She was at Trestles, that night.”
“I remember her,” Mathis noted in a neutral tone. “She fell
ill.”
Since Doyle was convinced that Mathis had poisoned the woman, she hurriedly turned the subject. “And the DCS was exposed as a blackleg that very night—the miserable gombeen.”
“A lot of drama,” Mathis agreed, in a monumental understatement. “Not what we’re used to, there.”
“And I argued with you about tactics, Mathis,” Williams reminded her, teasing. “I don’t think you’re used to that, either.”
“Not at all,” the girl agreed evenly, and dished out eggs and bacon without further comment.
Oh-ho, thought Doyle, smiling to herself. It’s smitten, she is—or as smitten as she allows herself to be. It’s like a soap opera, around here, what with Howard after Mary, and Gabriel after Munoz, and Mathis—well, Mathis was not exactly after Williams, but the girl wouldn’t protest if the man made a move, not that it seemed likely to happen. Idly, she watched them, as Williams listened to Emile’s chatter, and Mathis walked over to replace the boy’s rucksack on the closet hook, and hang up his jacket.
Wait—there it was; the boy’s jacket. Doyle stared, as Mathis casually closed the closet door, and returned to the sink. Doyle was certain that Emile had lost the jacket at the confirmation reception, but now it had re-appeared, coming back from Emile’s prison visit. So—whatever it was they were smuggling had made another round trip.
“When do you start school?” Williams asked Emile, with the air of someone hoping that it was sooner rather than later.
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“Next month,” the boy pronounced importantly. “I will wear a uniform, and there are rabbits, in a cage.”
Mathis looked up from doing the wash-up. “Oh—Lady Acton, Mr. Savoie asked if you would see to it that Emile has all the required inoculations.”
Doyle looked up in surprise. “I thought Emile already had his shots.”
“Mr. Savoie mentioned that he needed them; I’ve no idea, either way.” Mathis dried her hands, and then checked the messages on her mobile. “I’ll have to get back to the lab.”
“Well, thank you, Lizzie. When’s your next visit to the prison?” Mainly, Doyle was thinking about the next round of smuggling.
“I don’t believe there is anything scheduled,” Mathis replied in a neutral tone, and Doyle’s scalp prickled.
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The final act was slated for tomorrow, and then all accounts would be settled.
D oyle could barely contain her impatience as she waited for Williams to leave, and nearly pushed him out the door when he showed an inclination to linger—probably
was angling for another beer—but she’d some sleuthing to do, and best get it done before Reynolds came back. After closing the entry door, she pulled Emile’s jacket from the closet, and carefully examined it; checking the seams until she saw what she was looking for. Doyle’s mother had taught her to sew a fine seam, and a small section of the jacket’s inner lining had been hastily tacked.
Squeezing, she systematically went over the garment, and concluded that whatever it was, it had been taken out at the prison, which only made sense; something was going in, not coming out. What was surprising, though, was that the tacked seam area measured two inches, at most. Not a mobile phone, then? Cigarettes would fit, but it was hard to believe that Acton had gone to all this trouble for cigarettes, and she was certain that the smuggling operation was Acton’s—there was a plot af
oot.
Thoughtfully, she re-hung the jacket, and considered what was best to do. Acton was up to something—faith, the day Acton was not up to something should be declared a national holiday. He was in a good mood about whatever-it-was, and she’d the impression that he was crossing swords with someone—she knew the signs, by now—and that he was winning, which was not a surprise.
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And—according to Mathis’ last remark—no further prison visits were planned, so presumably the smuggling of small objects into the prison was at an end. Savoie was still there, though—he’d been held for an unusually long time without being charged. Savoie, who had the crooked guards at Wexton Prison in his back pocket, and was promising Emile that they’d go home, soon.
The most logical conclusion—when you added it all up— was that a prison break was planned, and indeed, Acton had admitted as much. The puzzling thing was that if the mechanisms for a prison break were being put in place, Savoie would presumably have to flee the country, but it seemed clear that Savoie was going nowhere. He’d enrolled Emile in school, here in London, and now he was fussing about his inoculations.
Doyle’s scalp prickled, and she turned her gaze toward the boy, who was standing at the window and watching the scene below, with his hands and forehead pressed against the glass. “Emile,” she asked. “Remember when you told me you got a shot? When was this?”
He lifted his head to look at her. “I needed to have a shot to go to St. Petersburg. It pinched, but I didn’t cry.” He looked down below again. “But then I didn’t even go.”
Doyle walked over, and stood beside him, as they gazed out the windows. “Do you remember what the doctor’s name was?”
The boy shook his head, and then breathed on the glass, creating a circle of moisture. “No—it wasn’t a doctor, it was a guard at the prison. He took my picture, too, for the important papers.”
Doyle stared at the top of the boy’s head, completely flummoxed. “Your Papa was goin’ to take you to St. Petersburg?” Perhaps Savoie was indeed departing these shores—although it seemed very strange that the notorious Frenchman would choose to go to St. Petersburg—one would imagine that the
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Russian underworld would not appreciate the likes of Philippe Savoie lurking about, trying to muscle in on their territory.
Smiling, the boy shook his head, and turned to look up at her, amused that she was so perplexed. “No, no, no—the lady was going to take me. The lady who is your friend—yours and Papa’s. She was going to take me to meet Papa in St. Petersburg, but it had to be a secret, and I mustn’t say.” He paused, then added fairly, “I don’t think it needs to be a secret anymore, since I’m not going.”
The puzzle didn’t seem to be getting any clearer, and so Doyle guessed, “Was the lady named Tasza? Was she tall, with blonde hair?”
The boy laughed at the absurdity of this. “No—it was the old lady; the babushka.”
Suddenly, the puzzle pieces began to fall into place, and with a sense of relief, Doyle remarked in a casual tone, “Oh— that’s right; the lady who was at Trestles, that night when we were all there.”
The boy nodded, and returned his scrutiny to the scene below them. “I played with the toy animals,” he remembered.
“Yes—that’s right. Are you sure it was the same lady, who was helping with your shot at the prison? I thought she was very sick.”
He sucked on his finger for a moment, before tracing in the wet image on the window. “Yes—it was her. Her hair is white, now.” He giggled. “She called me Jonathan—she didn’t know that was my old name, not my new one. She had a cane, and she let me hold it.”
Doyle nodded, and said no more. So; one mystery solved; Solonik’s evil sister—the boy’s aunt—must have resurfaced to try to seize the boy, and this move had no doubt resulted in her winding up under the rubble at Holy Trinity. There was not the smallest chance that Savoie was going to relinquish Emile to
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her—even though she was probably the only person with a legal claim to the boy—and Acton had been happy to assist in a little misdirection murder, to ensure the boy’s future.
This thought gave her pause, though, since Acton was not the type of man who would be over-concerned with someone else’s loose-end child. More likely he needed Savoie’s cooperation in whatever scheme was currently going forward, and this was the best way to guarantee it. Strange, though, that he’d gone to such lengths; if Mrs. Barayev had suddenly died at her nursing home, it wouldn’t have been much of a surprise, after all. There was no need, one would think, to go to the trouble of disguising her identity, and paying off a charwoman to disappear back to the other side of the world.
The concierge buzzed to say that Reynolds was below, and so Doyle decided that she’d postpone thinking about this niggling loose end; why had Acton staged such an elaborate misdirection murder, for someone he could murder in a much more plain-vanilla fashion? Mayhap he was showing off, or something. Or turning the tables—Acton was the grand master at turning the tables.
Emile immediately began debriefing Reynolds about his prison visit, and the servant—upon beholding the boy racing about the kitchen in his excitement—decided that a walk to the park might be just the thing. Doyle shot the man a grateful look as the two made their way out the entry door, Emile describing the prison’s barbed-wire-topped walls with ghoulish relish.
The sudden silence was a welcome relief, after such a ragged day, and Doyle decided that she’d very much like to behold her wayward husband, if for no other reason than to try to test out her theories.
“Come home?” she texted, then added, “Not in labor,” just so he didn’t panic. She’d the sense, despite his calm façade, that he was worried about the upcoming blessed event.
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“On my way, have some news,” he replied, and with a fond smile, she brushed her thumb across the screen. A doting man, he was, and she loved him, despite his many and troubling faults. After all, his many and troubling faults seemed to be rooted, lately, in his outsized devotion to his unlikely bride—it was one of those paradonces, or whatever you called them; he was constantly masterminding some scheme to supposedly better her life, and she was constantly telling him that he needn’t—all she needed was his fine self. The poor man had fixated on the wrong girl; mayhap if she started acting like a demanding shrew, he’d have less time to stir up trouble amongst the citizenry.
Blowing out a resigned breath, she put her mobile away, and acknowledged something she’d truthfully realized long ago—Acton was not about to stop his masterminding; he enjoyed it too much. He wasn’t exactly what you’d call a normal man, and all his various schemings helped him to feel that he was in control—that he could control the uncontrollable, as if there were such a thing. If he had a true faith, then perhaps he wouldn’t feel the need, but he didn’t have a true faith—few people did, it seemed—and so she should help him with his need-to-be-in-control issues, as best she could.
She’d been hoping that the happy rhythm of their life together might soothe him enough to tone it down, but apparently, she’d been too optimistic about the depth of the problem. Faith, it was a little disquieting to realize that he’d had Mrs. Barayev murdered just as he was preparing for his confirmation—really didn’t speak very well for the holy catechism, when all was said and done.
I’ll keep trying, she thought; I’m the only one who can, and I’ve got to think about that whole hellfire scenario—although Acton would probably give them a run for their money, down there.
With a sigh, she settled in to wait.
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It was extraordinary news, and he still wasn’t certain he believed it.
A short while later, her husband came through the door, bearing a latté generously topped with whipped cream. “To tempt yo
ur appetite,” he suggested, as he leaned to
kiss her. “You didn’t eat much, at lunch.”
Murder in Misdirection: A Doyle & Acton Mystery (The Doyle and Acton Scotland Yard series Book 7) Page 20