Blood Substitute

by Margaret Duffy

  ‘Such a beautiful woman,’ I whispered, gazing at the wedding group of bride, groom and all the guests. ‘What was her name?’

  ‘Orla.’

  Neither Patrick nor I made further comment: young James had not been present.

  ‘Louise knew all about Archie,’ Carrick continued. ‘He apparently was a bit of a rogue and drank heavily. She had an idea he’d moved down south, mostly on account of the local laird being after his hide for deer and salmon poaching. He was only a distant cousin of Robert’s after all.’

  ‘Yet he was listed as next-of-kin,’ I said. ‘Is there no other family to contact?’

  ‘None that I, or Ross, know about. I’ve no doubt one could undertake further research but I simply don’t have the time right now. What Louise did have, however, was a photograph. I got it through the post yesterday.’

  This time it came out of his wallet and was a small snapshot of friends on a picnic. The girl who must be Orla had moved, her face blurred, but Robert Kennedy stood out a mile, his lookalike right here in the room with us.

  ‘We need to see the mugshot,’ Patrick said gently.

  Carrick sighed and turned his attention to his computer. After a little all-fingers-and-thumbs difficulty a face came up on the screen. With the prison haircut, the face drawn, thirty-seven years later but looking older than his years, here, surely, was the same man.

  ‘He’s been very ill,’ I murmured.

  ‘I’m still not too sure it’s him,’ James said, a catch in his voice.

  ‘It is,’ Patrick said. ‘Accept it, man.’

  ‘Aye,’ Carrick said, and asking us to excuse him, abruptly left the room.

  Paul Reece was in the senior officers’ canteen and appeared tense and also a little flustered that we had found him snatching a few minutes’ break. He organized some coffee and biscuits for us and when we had assured him that we were perfectly happy to exchange news right where we were, reseated himself.

  ‘I fully intend to take a look at this amazing farm on Dartmoor,’ he announced, adding, ‘Although I’m damned if I know what good my presence there’ll do.’

  Patrick produced the file we had quickly created before we left Bath’s Manvers Street police station. It contained what information there was available on Robert Kennedy, the photograph of him and a background report and the early findings at Sheepwash Farm, in case the Devon and Cornwall Force had not yet forwarded this in an email.

  ‘There’s one piece of information that isn’t in that,’ Patrick told Reece as he handed it over. ‘This man could well be James Carrick’s father whom he had always thought to be dead.’

  Reece stared at him. ‘Bloody hell! Do you mind if I look at this now?’

  ‘There’s no real evidence as far as Kennedy’s concerned,’ Patrick said when Reece had finished reading. ‘Only the connection with the farmhouse and it’s strange, to say the least, when crooks start leaving their autograph on their murder victims. One must assume they’re either raving lunatics or they badly want someone else to get the blame.’

  ‘Inter-gang warfare then?’ Reece mused. ‘God, James must be in hell over it.’

  ‘He is. Or rivalry within the same gang?’

  ‘Um. Someone trying to oust the bossman perhaps.’

  ‘They’d have to be RKs too.’

  ‘There’s no one known to us around here with those initials.’ Reece sighed. ‘It’s vital we soon get a lead on this tall character.’

  ‘We might have to make things happen.’

  Reece leaned back in his chair and subjected Patrick to a steady gaze. ‘Like what for instance?’

  ‘You could tell the media that you have in custody a man called Riko Kastovic, an illegal immigrant, for Morley’s murder. Or do it with a flourish: all bells and whistles with someone covered with a blanket being taken to a city centre nick.’

  ‘The guilty bastards’ll just think we’ve screwed up and laugh all the way to the pub!’ Reece protested.

  ‘Then put it about, via the grapevine, that he’s singing his heart out and telling you everything you want to know. Then have him busted out of a prison van taking him away on remand by villains unknown. The tall man and his friends will fall over one another to get hold of him, dead worried that somehow he does know a thing or two, and, hopefully, make big mistakes and because you’ll have an army of undercover people right on Kastovic’s tail you’ll be able to grab them.’

  Reece frowned. ‘They’ll know they didn’t bust him out of the van.’

  ‘Well, of course. But the villains unknown might just be a rival mob who want to remove the new opposition from their patch for ever and Kastovic knows exactly who they are too.’ Here Patrick gave the Superintendent a crazy sort of grin.

  After a short pause Reece said, ‘This isn’t your MI5 days, you know.’

  ‘No, it’s my SOCA days and the MI5 experience is why they wanted me,’ Patrick retorted.

  After a brief silence Reece said, ‘I’ll think about it.’

  ‘Do you have anything on the two snouts, Jeffers and Ritter?’ I asked, feeling the proceedings needed a kick in the pants. ‘Has it been confirmed that they weren’t murdered at the farm? What about their families, if any? Girlfriends? People they knocked around with?’

  The superintendent turned to me with what I felt to be exaggerated patience. ‘They were men who drifted around doing odd-jobs, or worked for a short while on building sites as labourers. Ritter had had a job as a warehouseman for a department store in the city, on and off though mostly at Christmas. Jeffers was more of a layabout. It’s believed they both came from the north somewhere originally and had known one another for years. You can picture it: drop-outs from school, in trouble with the law from day one. No one seems to know if they had families and they were never seen with regular girlfriends. That’s hardly surprising as they probably never had any money.’

  Cynical old sod, isn’t he? I thought.

  ‘It has been established that they weren’t killed in the farmhouse,’ Reece continued. ‘And there’s not sufficient blood at the scene for the knife work to have been inflicted upon them there although how they were transported, dead or practically so, without those handling them and their vehicles getting covered in it is anyone’s guess. If they were they didn’t try to wash it off in the kitchen sink and apparently there’s no bathroom there, just an outside lavatory served by an ancient septic tank that I understand is spilling raw sewage into a nearby ditch. The yard was a sea of mud when the local CID arrived and they satisfied themselves that any tyre tracks had been obliterated by the heavy rain before they drove in. The carpets, such as they were, were taken away by Forensics for examination but as you know every man and his dog had been in the place since the suitcase containing the explosive device was discovered by yourselves. You’ll have to give us your fingerprints by the way.’

  Patrick shook his head. ‘No, we wore gloves – the place was already a potential crime scene when we arrived as the place had been turned over. There was every indication that someone had left in a hurry although they had not gone in the Land Rover we found in a barn. But when we returned the next morning – that’s when we investigated the suitcase – the vehicle had gone.’

  I said, ‘We still don’t know if Archie Kennedy’s really dead or if he was the man I met.’

  ‘He’s not registered as deceased at the Plymouth Registry Office and according to West Devon Borough Council is still the occupier of the farm,’ Reece said. ‘So if he really is dead it either happened somewhere else or no one’s said a word.’

  I had visions of a lonely grave somewhere in the rock-strewn, sodden peat wilderness.

  Six

  ‘In case you were wondering,’ Patrick said to me, ‘I have no intention of following up my own suggestion and pretending to be an illegal immigrant by the name of Kastovic.’

  I was very glad to hear this, and told him so, adding, ‘You’re far more use to this case when you’re not the bait being chase
d through the sewers of Bristol by armed gangsters.’

  We had left Paul Reece to finish his coffee before he was due to attend the post-mortems of the two murder victims – part of the reason, I was sure, for his giving every appearance of being under strain.

  ‘It might be more fruitful to track down Robert Kennedy,’ Patrick went on to say in the manner of someone thinking aloud.

  ‘Where would we start?’

  ‘There’s only one link that we know of and that’s Lord Muirshire.’

  ‘Would an aristocrat remain on friendly terms with a man who had turned to a life of crime?’

  ‘You must know the answer to that question. Yes, a Scot would – they’re programmed that way. Loyalty and all that. Quite right too.’

  We did not have to go to Scotland to see the Marquess of Muirshire: he came to us, or more accurately, to London.

  It was, we discovered, an annual dinner that he always attended, something to do with an Anglo-Scottish tourist association. I also gathered when I spoke over the phone to his estate manager that it was only one of several occasions during the year when the Marquess journeyed south as, to quote, ‘his Lordship’s not one of those Scots who sits mouldering in his castle brooding over the perceived injuries the English visited upon his ancestors.’

  ‘He would say that,’ Lord Muirshire said on a chuckle when I repeated this to him. ‘Robin’s an Englishman even though he’s lived in the Inverness area for most of his life. A real way with words and quite a sense of humour too – although I admit that as far as some of my neighbours are concerned he has a point.’ He spoke with hardly a trace of an accent.

  I had never met this nobleman before – who had appeared delighted to meet us for coffee at his hotel, the Savoy – but Patrick had. He immediately put us at our ease, insisting we call him Ross. He was a tall, spare but wiry man in his late fifties or early sixties with thinning grey hair and keen blue eyes. Looking at his immaculate suit I wondered if the London trips were also in order that he could visit his tailor.

  ‘I can guess what you want to talk about,’ he said, pouring the coffee. ‘You’re friends of James’s and he’s been on the phone to me lately asking if I can throw any light on this business of his father. I can only tell you the same: that even after the developments in Devon I’m afraid I cannot.’

  ‘So you were unaware that he was still alive, never mind in prison for serious criminal activities?’ Patrick said smoothly.

  ‘That’s right. As I believe you already know, I was on the yacht when he went overboard. We searched for him for over an hour but the conditions were terrible with sudden dangerous squalls. If he survived I don’t know how and can only think this is a case of mistaken, or stolen, identity.’

  ‘He was neither wearing a safety harness or life jacket? That’s staggering, given the weather.’

  The Marquess smiled. ‘You’re forgetting. This was getting on for forty years ago. There wasn’t the mania for safety then and Robert, strictly speaking, wasn’t part of the crew but a guest. He shouldn’t have been where he was on the open deck – in fact had been told to stay out of the way. And I must point out that life jackets were very bulky things in those days and mostly intended for when you had to take to the dingy to abandon ship. Working in them was difficult and people didn’t, not on that boat anyway.’

  ‘James appears to have accepted that the man released from prison is his father though. Did he mention to you the photograph his cousin Louise sent to him?’

  ‘Yes, but it’s just a snapshot taken at a picnic, isn’t it?’ Ross replied sadly. ‘It doesn’t prove anything, other than showing a strong likeness between man and son.’

  ‘The only way to prove anything is to find the man.’

  ‘That might be very difficult.’

  ‘Do you know anything about Archie Kennedy?’ I enquired.

  ‘Only that he was a real reprobate and moved south to evade a prosecution on several counts of poaching.’ Ross shrugged. ‘Whether he really is dead I don’t know but I must admit that the man you met at the cottage, Ingrid, is a bit of a mystery. Please, you must understand that with regard to Archie, and Robert for that matter, and my knowing anything about them we’re talking about two of a huge family of almost a hundred people who don’t even belong to my clan!’

  ‘Are there any other relatives who might know where Robert is?’ Patrick asked.

  ‘No, I don’t think you’ll find there is, at least not in the UK. They’re scattered all over the world.’

  It was useless to persist with the questioning but on an afterthought I asked, ‘Do you know what Robert Kennedy did for a living? I mean, I presume he had a job.’

  ‘His parents were fairly wealthy,’ Ross said reflectively. ‘A lot of parties, shoots and weekends at friends’ estates – young people going madly in all directions really. And obviously, sailing. He went to St Andrews university, I think. I know he wanted to come here, to London, but with what career in mind I couldn’t tell you.’

  And yet there was this photograph of a thuggish-looking jailbird, I thought. ‘Do you know how he met James’s mother?’

  ‘Yes, she worked at a village grocer’s shop where people used to stop for provisions for sailing trips, picnics and things like that.’

  ‘Something doesn’t quite tie up in all this,’ I said to Patrick later when we had left the hotel and were walking through fine misty rain along the Victoria Embankment.

  ‘You mean you think Ross knows more then he pretends to?’

  ‘He might well do. But, for goodness sake, the man drips integrity. If he is not telling all it would be for the right reasons.’

  ‘One could understand Robert not wanting to meet James. It would be very difficult for them both.’

  ‘Assuming he’s even bothered to find out what his son’s doing – one must bear in mind that all he was aware of before he went sailing on that yacht was that Orla was pregnant. For all he knew she could have had an abortion or lost the baby.’

  ‘The only person likely to have been able to tell him about that is Ross. What I find a little odd is that some time ago James told me that Ross had said that he and Robert were really good friends and Robert was a fine man. And yet he seems not to know what he did for a living.’

  ‘I’m beginning to agree with Ross and think it’s a case of mistaken, or stolen, identity,’ I said. ‘What man from that sort of background who had survived drowning at sea would go off without telling anyone?’

  Patrick pulled a wry face. ‘You’ve lined me up to say that men are bastards and leave their pregnant girlfriends.’

  ‘I haven’t!’ I protested.

  Stopping in his tracks, he said, ‘OK then, oh oracle mine. Fulfil your role as my adviser. Ignore the mistaken identity argument and brainstorm.’

  My husband was not altogether joking and probably needed his lunch, I surmised, but also stopped and said, a bombshellish idea having just surfaced, ‘You mean if it really is Robert Kennedy and he isn’t a sadist and is just out of prison and the man I met is Archie Kennedy pretending to be dead and if I programme in all the other things that happened at the farm and the death of Cliff Morley with the initials RK carved on him and bung in Ross’s assertion that Robert was a good sort of bloke in his youth plus taking into consideration the good sort of bloke we know James to be?’

  ‘If you like.’ There was gentle amusement now.

  ‘Then he either faked his own death or lost his memory after being washed up somewhere and is an undercover policeman, or something along those lines, and someone in the gang he’s in, or one in London with a connection, doesn’t like him or suspects he’s a plant. He could be in great danger.’

  Patrick’s jaw did not quite drop. ‘What?’

  ‘I’m starving, are you?’

  Patrick not recognizing as man-fuel tiny artworks of delicate morsels encased in baskets of plaited lettuce in the centre of a fourteen-inch diameter plate decorated with squiggles of rare balsamic vineg
ar, we went to a pub where the fare was more robust. I had no health fears on his behalf about this as he is, as a result of sheer hard training, as fit and lean as a racing snake. I noticed, with some amusement of my own, that my statement was actually having the effect of taking his mind off the menu.

  ‘You know what this means, don’t you?’ he said, laying it aside.

  ‘It’s only an alternative theory,’ I pointed out.

  ‘It’s straight out of one of your books,’ he continued, almost resentfully, ‘But also has quite a lot going for it. No, it means a change of tactics so we can factor in what you’ve just said.’

  ‘Can’t we find out though? Surely even deeply undercover policeman can be checked up on by colleagues in other branches.’

  ‘No, by no means. It’s too dangerous. Just one word to the wrong person can be the end of someone. I know of a case where even a man’s wife thought he’d died – the family only knew him as an out-and-out crook. It went to the extent of having a funeral. He wasn’t dead and resurrected himself to shove a whole gang in the slammer for just about ever. It was all set up by the department he was working for.’

  ‘It’s hardly a family-friendly way of working.’

  ‘Only a certain kind of person can do it and I understand that it’s usually at the end of an operative’s career or his stint with that particular branch. They retire, or are transferred and given a new identity thereby disappearing from the dangerous area – together with their nearest and dearest if they’re still on speaking terms.’

  ‘Are you having the lamb hotpot?’

  ‘Er … yes.’

  ‘I’d like the Greek salad, please.’

  ‘No,’ Patrick said all at once, emerging from a deep reverie after we had eaten. ‘On second thoughts I don’t think we should factor in your theory even though it’s growing on me. I remember what it was like when we worked for D12 and someone from another department or the cops crashed into one of my scenarios and ratted everything up. Assuming you’ve guessed right, or even partly so, I reckon we should allow whoever’s running that particular show to get on with it. It’s sufficient for the present that we’ve mentioned his possible involvement in the case to Reece. If Kennedy is in danger – and I also suggest that right now we say nothing of any theories to Carrick – then until anyone asks for assistance we leave well alone. As you say, it’s only conjecture and sometimes more damage can be done by the well-intentioned interference of allies than by the enemy.