He parked his car in the awkward little space at the end of the hotel drive and made his way inside. They had chosen places to stay that were dog friendly, small enough for Naomi to find her way around very quickly, but large enough so that she didn’t feel too exposed and could escape back to their room without anyone really taking notice. Their specific requirements had been the one thing that had directed their journeying. If they found an appropriate hotel, they went there, regardless of the location.
They would have to make some solid decisions soon, Alec supposed, but he wasn’t sure when either of them would be ready to do that and he blessed the bequest of a beloved uncle that had left them with sufficient resources to ease any immediate pressure.
He ran up the short flight of steps outside the Edwardian hotel, once an impressive home for a mill owner called Fredericks they had been told, and was surprised to have Napoleon come to greet him in the hall.
‘Hello, old man, where is she then?’ He bent and stroked the dog’s silky ears. The dog wasn’t wearing his harness, which meant he was off duty; had it been otherwise he would not have left Naomi’s side. Alec took this as a good sign. Naomi was obviously comfortable here.
‘In here,’ she called and he followed the big black dog back into the hotel bar. Naomi sat on a high stool, a cafetière and two cups on the bar top. A woman Alec didn’t recognize sat on another bar stool and the hotel owner leaned against the rear wall, slowly polishing the already sparkling glasses. From the look of them, they’d all been there chatting for some time. Naomi was evidently relaxed and happy and so Alec relaxed too and shed the guilt that had been building as he drove back.
He took his wife’s hand and kissed her. ‘Sorry I was so long.’
‘That’s OK, I know what it’s like when relatives get to reminiscing. This is Liz Trent, she’s a local historian, writes books and also makes pots. We’ve had a lovely hour or two.’
Alec looked with interest at the other woman. She was tall, he guessed. She looked tall even sitting down. Her hair was defiantly white, as though it had skipped both the grey and silver stages. It was swept back into a silver clip at the nape of her neck. Her skin, pale and very English Rose, was still smooth, apart from the deep laughter lines around her grey green eyes. He guessed she must be in her mid-fifties and Alec found himself thinking that she must have been quite a beauty in her younger days. He extended a hand.
‘Pleased to meet you. What sort of things do you write about?’
The woman called Liz smiled broadly. ‘Whatever interests me,’ she said. ‘And when I can’t think what to write I go and fire a few more pots. I like experimental glazes. The crystalline sort that have a massive failure rate and give me about one pot in four that actually does what I want it to.’
Alec laughed, a little bewildered. ‘And how does that fit in with the history writing?’
She positively beamed at him now and Alec realized he had inadvertently hit on just the right question.
‘Liz tries to recreate historically accurate glazes,’ Naomi said. ‘A great many recipes are completely lost, apparently.’
‘You’d be amazed what went into them,’ Liz said. ‘But I think I’ve bored your wife long enough. Time to be off and I’ll drop a copy of my book in. Alec can read it to you.’ She laughed and hopped off the bar stool, then shook Alec’s hand again.
He’d been right, she was tall, matching his own six feet two. She took Naomi’s hand and patted it. ‘Lovely to chat,’ she said. ‘I hope we’ll meet again while you’re still here.’
‘And do we hope that too?’ Alec asked quietly as Liz strode out of the door.
‘Actually, I wouldn’t mind. She’s a bit intense, but she’s really interesting. I’ve had a very funny afternoon.’
‘Funny ha ha?’
‘Funny ha ha, yes. And you?’
‘More funny peculiar.’ Alec sighed and took the seat Liz had vacated. ‘Do you want a drink?’
‘No, I’ll wait until dinner. You sound as if you need one, though.’
‘You could say that. When do you want to eat?’
‘Soon, I’m starving. I bet you are too. Dealing with Molly always makes me hungry.’
‘Not just Molly,’ Alec said. He ordered a Scotch and sipped it before adding the ginger. He could see the moue of disapproval on Naomi’s lips as she heard him pour it. She was of the opinion that if it was good enough to drink, then you took your whisky neat. If it wasn’t good enough to drink in its pure form it was best left on the shelf.
Alec glanced at his watch. ‘Want an early dinner?’ he asked. ‘I think I’ve earned it.’
Naomi reached for his hand and he clasped her fingers. ‘You really should choose your pretend relatives with a bit more care,’ she said.
‘So how was she,’ Naomi asked, feeling for her fork and turning her plate on Alec’s instructions so that her vegetables were on the left and the chicken on the right.
‘Oh, she’s all right. No, that’s not right. She’s coping, but I think she was really frightened and I think that annoys her.’
Naomi laughed. ‘It would,’ she agreed. ‘So, what did keep you? I can’t see Molly wanting you there all afternoon.’
‘No, I was dismissed when I made some faux pas I still can’t identify. I went to see the investigating officers. They showed me the case files.’
‘Oh?’ An ex-serving officer herself, Naomi was immediately curious. Before she had been blinded, Naomi and Alec’s career’s had run roughly parallel. In his more analytical moments, Alec acknowledged that she’d actually been more ambitious than he had and would probably have ended up at a higher rank, had the accident not happened.
‘They still don’t know who he was,’ Alec said. ‘But they are pretty sure that Molly did, only she’s decided not to tell.’
‘Why on earth would she decide that?’
‘Why indeed,’ Alec said. Briefly, he filled her in on what DI Barnes and his sergeant had told him and what files they had permitted him to read. ‘It’s all a bit of a mess,’ he said. ‘Even for Molly this is odd. Whatever else she might be she’s usually honest. If she’s keeping something back she must feel she has a damned good reason.’
‘And the two murders. You said two people had been shot with the same gun. What links them?’
‘As yet, nothing. The first was eight weeks ago and the second ten days after that. Shooting number one was a man called …’ he paused and felt in his pocket for his notebook, slid the elastic band aside and flicked through the pages. ‘Ah, yes, Arthur Fields. He imported antiques, from the Far East, mostly. Specialized in Chinese porcelain and had a house out Stamford way He was in his late seventies and a member of the Rotary club. A school governor and a magistrate. He was shot once, in the head. The shot came through his kitchen window. They reckon whoever took the shot was bloody professional. It was dark outside, the shooter was looking into a lighted window, through old glass, you know, that mullioned stuff with the bullseye sections, so the parallax would have been a swine. But the shot was clean and from, they think, about a hundred and fifty feet away. They are assuming the sniper was up a tree at the end of the garden as that’s about the only way he’d have got a clean shot.’
‘And the second.’
‘A younger business man. Name of Herbert Norris. Jamaican father, English mother, ran a little shop that sold vintage lighting in Newark, that’s Nottinghamshire, apparently. Barnes tells me there are a lot of antique shops there …’
‘And dog friendly hotels?’ Naomi smiled at the evident bribe.
‘I’m sure we can find something. Norris was thirty-seven. Again, no record. He’d been running the shop for eight years, unmarried, though it seems he had an on-off girlfriend for most of that time. She found his body.’
‘Poor woman,’ Naomi said. ‘And no links to Arthur Fields.’
‘Nothing yet. Herbert Norris was shot in his flat, above the shop. There were no signs of forced entry and the shot was at close range thi
s time so the assumption has to be that he knew the killer or had some reason to let him in.’
‘Or he answered the door to a man with a gun and didn’t have much option about letting him in.’
‘Or that,’ Alec agreed.
For a minute or two they ate in silence, each running through the facts. At Naomi’s feet, Napoleon snuffled contentedly.
Naomi eventually broke the silence. ‘What if he’d come to kill Molly? What if he came, but something made him change his mind?’
‘So, why didn’t he just leave? If indecision is a reason to blow your brains out then we two are in serious trouble.’
Naomi laughed. ‘Or he was afraid of whoever had sent him to do the job.’
‘There is that, of course, but it still seems bloody dramatic. Most professionals have places they can go to ground if a job goes wrong. No, I don’t really buy that one.’
‘Most professionals don’t suddenly change their minds. They take the money, do the job. If they have scruples about kids, dogs and old ladies, they state them up front, before anyone hires them.’
‘And when did you become such an expert on professional assassins? No, but you are probably right. Molly said something weird.’
‘Normal weird or weird for Molly?’
‘Weird for Molly. She said he pointed the gun at her before turning it on himself and that it was almost as if he wanted her to share in the moment. To know what he was feeling.’
Naomi frowned. ‘And why would she think that?’
‘I don’t know, but she’d obviously run it back and forth in her mind for quite a while and that was the conclusion she had come to. The way she talked about it, it was almost as though they’d shared something …’ he paused, searching for the word.
‘Intimate?’ Naomi suggested.
Alec nodded. ‘Yes, I think that’s exactly right. I don’t know, somehow that makes it even more disturbing. Would you like some more wine?’
He refilled their glasses, and took a sip. ‘The gun was interesting.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes, a real cold war relic, apparently.’ He consulted his notebook again. ‘Something called an MSP SP-3, 7.62mm, fired just the two shots, but the ammunition is internally suppressed. It’s effectively silent.’
‘Sounds rare,’ Naomi said.
‘Mostly KGB, apparently. It was used for close-range assassinations, the effective accurate range, I’m told, was no more than a hundred, a hundred and fifty feet. It’s an unusual looking thing, not much bigger than a derringer, but looks a bit like a very short automatic.’
‘Odd,’ Naomi said. ‘Why use something like that when you could have taken her down with a high-powered rifle? Not that I’m suggesting anyone should, of course.’
Alec shrugged. ‘Beats me. It seems kind of personal, though, the same way stabbing someone is personal, you know what I mean?’
‘I know what you mean,’ Naomi confirmed. She frowned. ‘So what do we do now? Stay here for a few more days and keep an eye on Molly? Or go chasing off to Newark to look for clues?’
Alec sipped more wine, considering. ‘I think, if you don’t mind, we’ll stay around here for a while. I want to cultivate DI Barnes and see what more he has to say and I think Molly needs us.’
‘She’d never admit it.’
‘The day Molly admits she needs anyone will be the day they nail the coffin lid down.’
‘She needed Edward,’ Naomi objected.
‘And the need was mutual. She and Edward made an excellent team. You know, if was one of those marriages where you never ever expected them to have children. They were kind of complete, all on their own.’
He paused and Naomi could feel him looking at her, wondering if he’d been crass. They had talked, last year, about starting a family. Alec had been very keen; Naomi not so sure. He’d pressured her for a while and then, quite abruptly, let the matter drop and she still wasn’t certain what he really wanted. She had figured that he didn’t either. Since then the subject of a possible family had been one he had taken pains to avoid. Naomi avoided it now.
‘When do we go and see her?’ she asked. She felt Alec relax.
‘I don’t know. Tomorrow, maybe? I want to talk to her again before Barnes decides to make it official.’
‘You think he will?’
‘I think he may have to. He’s given me some leeway, says he wants me to see what I can get out of her first, but the phone call was pretty damning, no matter what she says about being confused.’
‘Which could well be true, of course. Having a gun pointed at your head doesn’t do a lot for logical thought.’
‘True. But this is Molly we’re talking about. She’s spent most of her life in and out of war zones. I doubt, in fact I know for a fact, it’s not the first time that’s happened to her.’
‘First time in her own bedroom, maybe.’
‘Well, yes. Maybe that.’
‘You think she’s definitely lying to Barnes, don’t you?’
‘I think she recognized something. I think it’s possible she did make a mistake and for a moment she thought this young man with the gun was someone else, but—’ He paused and Naomi could almost hear the cogs turning. ‘But I don’t know what the but is,’ he admitted finally.
‘So, we go and ask her,’ Naomi said. ‘Molly prefers people to be direct. We’ll be direct.’
‘And get thrown out for our trouble.’
‘Probably, but we’ve got to give it a shot.’
‘If you’ll pardon the pun.’
‘Sorry, none intended. You want dessert?’
‘I think I may. You?’
Naomi nodded. ‘Alec, if Molly was a target—’
‘Then someone may try and finish the job. Yes, I talked to Barnes about that. He tried to persuade her to go away for a few days but, well, you know Molly.’
‘Police protection?’
‘Out of what budget? She’s a witness to a suicide. She’s given the police no reason to think she may have been singled out by this man. There’s no connection with the two dead men and, besides, she’s told Barnes to take his offer of protection and, well, you know Molly.’
Naomi nodded. ‘Whatever is going on,’ she said, ‘Molly will stand and face it.’
‘She’s too damned proud to ask for help,’ Alec added miserably.
Naomi just laughed. ‘Alec, if you think that then you’ve not understood the first thing about Molly Chambers.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘What I mean is, Molly won’t ask for help because she views us all as incompetents that would only get in the way because we don’t know what we’re doing. The only way Molly would accept help from us is if we prove that we’re not.’
Molly knelt beside the bed and pulled an old tin trunk out from beneath it. She really ought to burn this stuff, she thought. But she’d thought that so many times and never done anything about it. Inside the trunk were memories of her younger self, her travels, her marriage, her friends, photographed in so many places and at so many times. Invitations to parties. A pair of white silk gloves. Little notes from Edward and items of jewellery she no longer wore. She missed him terribly. The pain of missing him made her feel like she’d been sliced in two and all she’d wanted to do at his funeral was to climb into the casket beside him and face oblivion.
Downstairs there were photograph albums, many of them. But this old box housed the more personal reminders; those pictures and letters and little moments that were not for public consumption. The thought that, after her death, someone else might lay hands on these treasures, that her innermost feelings and loves and secrets might be laid bare for another’s eyes, disturbed her deeply and she had always planned to dispose of the contents of this box before she went.
And this latest reminder of her own mortality had felt like a warning that it was time for the fire.
Oh, but it was so hard to think of letting go. Of the renewed pain that offering up such precious things to th
e flames would afford that Molly, tough as old boots Molly, could not bring herself to take that final step. It would be like another little death, another funeral.
Molly shuffled through the photographs, finally discovering the one she had been seeking. She had been so sure; so unequivocally certain when she had seen that young man’s face, and yet, there was really no way it could be him. It was just some memory of a face superimposed upon that of another.
The photograph she sought had been taken in 1961 or maybe early ’62. But no; they had left by then. She turned it over to check the date, scribed in pencil in Edward’s hand. August ’61, then. It was taken outside a hotel in Leopoldville as it had been back then. A group of young people, none of them more than mid-twenties, and all excited by the prospect of what might be achieved.
Edward was attached to the UN forces that had been sent to Leopoldville to try and keep the peace while this very new country found its feet. In all, there were around 12,000 troops there, drawn from across Africa, Europe and Asia; none from what could be construed as colonial powers. There were other armed men too, roaming the countryside. The 10,000 Belgian troops that had still not been withdrawn, even after independence, 2,000 of which were still posted in the secessionist state of Katanga. Ostensibly, they were there to protect what was left of the Belgian nationals, though the vast majority of these had left the year before, taking their possessions and their money.
Molly recalled reading somewhere that around $180 million had been withdrawn from the country in the two years before, as businesses had closed and left and individuals had packed their bags.
And then there were the mercenaries. The locals called them afrits, Molly recalled. The terrors, the frightful ones. She’d met a few and was very much inclined to agree, though on balance they were no better or worse than many special forces soldiers she had encountered across the world.
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