by Clare Chase
I dropped the phone – my former lifeline suddenly as deadly as a cobra – and it landed in the passenger footwell, glowing. Distantly I could hear his voice and it was some moments before I plucked up the courage to reach down and disconnect the call.
I kept the phone well away from me as I pressed the red button; the very thought of hearing him made me shake.
Before he could try a second time I called Seb’s number, but it came up as engaged. I tried again immediately with the same result. I kept at it, until at last, between attempts, my phone rang, and this time it was Seb’s details on the screen.
‘God I’m sorry, Anna,’ he said. ‘What a time to lose coverage. Thank goodness you had the sense to stay where you were. I tried you before but you were engaged.’
‘Darrick called,’ I said, stuttering. He was silent but I carried on, the words tumbling out, my teeth chattering. ‘I answered, thinking it was you, but when I saw it was him I dropped the phone. I managed to cut him off, and then I tried to ring you.’
I heard him let out a long breath. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but it’s all right now. He can’t find you and I’m going to get you safe, d’you hear me?’
I swallowed.
‘Anna?’
‘Yes.’
‘Right. Have you been past any landmarks that would help me find out where you’re stranded?’
Thinking back gave my mind something concrete to latch onto. The relief that he was on the line again was overwhelming. Just talking to him began to calm me. ‘I went past a footpath to High End Tarn,’ I said.
There was a moment’s pause. ‘I see it. Now listen, I’ve still got my parents’ place up there. Not the main house but a weekend cottage they used to use once they’d sold up and moved down south. End House it’s called. I let it out, but it’s unoccupied at the moment. Why don’t you head there?’
He gave me directions and I scribbled them down, my writing spidery, my hand still shaking. Although it was a little way, there were so few roads going in that direction that it sounded fairly simple to find.
‘If you get stuck, drive to the top of a hill where you can get coverage and call me again, okay?’ he said.
‘Right.’
‘When you get to the house there’s a key under the plant pot to the left of the front door. It’s not the type of place where you get burglars.’
The drive seemed to take forever. I went slowly, feeling scared about what I might find round every corner. Seb was right: Darrick couldn’t possibly know where I was, but if I did come face to face with him I’d have no way of escaping. The road was so narrow and the mountains hemmed me in on every side. I hadn’t seen any other drivers for miles now, nor passed any houses, and it was properly dark. The rain teemed on.
From Seb’s directions I reckoned I must be almost there. There were few landmarks to see, but he’d mentioned a gateway and an old barn that I thought I’d spotted. At the same time the idea that I might have missed it was horrible. I wondered whether to call him to check, but my mobile had been out of coverage ever since I’d started to drive again.
At last I saw a turning up ahead. That could be it. And my mobile must have come back to life then too. There was the sound of a text coming in. The relief to be somewhere safe and back in touch with the outside world again was enormous.
I scrambled out of the car, grabbing my holdall, and went to the find the key.
Inside the cottage it was cold. I’d got slightly wet, fumbling with the plant pot outside, and I suppose reaction made me shake too. I flicked on a light and then went to find some way of getting warm. There was a fire in the living room, but no coal. I found a backdoor key and looked outside where I discovered a store, so I refilled the scuttle and found some matches in a drawer in the kitchen.
Once the fire was lit, I remembered the message on my phone. It told me I had voicemail. Someone must have tried to call me when I was out of coverage; probably Darrick, but I needed to check. It could have been Seb.
I went to dial to pick it up, but realised the connectivity I’d had briefly had gone again – maybe before I turned the corner towards the cottage track.
I wondered whether to go out and try to get back to the right spot so I could dial in and pick it up. I peered out of the window into total darkness. It wasn’t tempting, but it might be important and, now that I’d found the house, I felt more confident. No one but Seb knew where I was. Light and warmth brought some return to sanity, and I pulled my coat around me, ready to brave the walk back to the lane.
The wind was strong, whipping my hair across my face and driving the rain sideways so it reached under my hood. I was relieved to see my phone come back to life, just under half a mile from the house. I dialled my voicemail and jabbed impatiently at the ‘one’ key on my phone to cut the instructions short. The voice was announcing message one, received at 4.50 p.m. when I saw the lights of the car.
I cut the call. Seb was the only person who might be ringing with anything urgent to say, and now he could tell me in person.
But it wasn’t Seb.
The car was unfamiliar – sleek and black. The driver door opened, and out stepped Professor Maxwell-Evans.
Chapter Forty-Four
The Professor was holding a knife; its long blade gleamed in the car headlights. For a split second I considered running, but I knew I’d never outpace him; he was more than a foot taller than me. I found I was breathing hard and fast, trying to get enough air in. My legs were like lead; everything felt heavy. My heart lurched unevenly in my chest, but I was also just lucid enough to think that making any sudden moves might surprise him into lashing out sooner than he’d intended.
Even though I’d wondered about him recently, I still couldn’t think how he came to be here. Panic made my mind slow and stupid.
When I spoke my voice came out dry and broken and my comment was pulled from the air. ‘I saw you with Radley.’
He nodded, his smooth, dark hair flying in the wind, his silk scarf fluttering over his shoulder. ‘She’s got a sharp, nasty little mind. Just like you. She’ll find out what happens to people who ask too many questions if she’s not careful.’ He made a move towards me, the knife point just inches from my chest. ‘It’s all self interest with her though. She doesn’t give a damn about what happened to Julia Thorpe. She’s just homing in on anything that might affect Seb. She’s after his job, looking for chinks in his armour now their relationship’s gone sour.’
I watched his dark eyes as he spoke.
‘Seb will be here in a minute,’ I said. ‘He knows where I am. You’d better give this up; it’s not going to work.’
Maxwell-Evans laughed now, the noise loud and harsh, rising above the sound of the wind in the trees. ‘Seb’s in London,’ he said.
I shook my head. ‘I just spoke to him. He told me to come here …’ And it was only then that I realised what must really have happened. I felt hollow, my breath taken away from me. I remembered the time I thought I’d seen Maxwell-Evans going into Seb’s office. But then Seb had denied having been in contact with him recently, and I’d believed him. Just like that. Trusted him above the evidence of my own eyes.
Maxwell-Evans was smiling lazily, shaking his head, and moving towards me. ‘You see it now, don’t you?’ he said. ‘Sebastian told me to watch out for you. He said you were quick. But frankly, you haven’t lived up to your billing.’
Through the fear and shock his words reached my paralysed brain. When I spoke, I was just confirming what I already knew; trying to absorb the truth. The betrayal seemed too monumental to take in. ‘Seb told you to come to me here?’
‘Of course. Very easy for him to claim to be in one place when he’s actually in another.’
‘I saw you go into his office.’
‘Shame you didn’t make better use of the knowledge. That’s what set Radley off too. She noticed Sebastian was going crazy trying to contact me just after Farron showed up at Shakespeare’s private view. I was abroad and the fool let his
desperation show.
‘She pretended she wanted to have lunch to pick my brains about the wider arts world. It was all quite pleasant until she started dropping hints about my dealings with Sebastian, and what she might know. It was all bluster of course, but I think she hoped I might accelerate her career to keep her on side.’ He laughed. ‘She’s got no idea what she’s dealing with.’
I tried desperately to get a grip on the situation. My mind moved slowly, as though I’d just woken up out of a deep sleep. ‘So Seb killed Julia?’ I said. ‘And now you’re covering for him?’ I remembered that he collected art. ‘He sold you the Goya drawings?’
‘B minus,’ Maxwell-Evans said. ‘I had her drawings all right, but Seb didn’t kill Julia and sell them to me. You don’t really think a pretty boy like him would get his hands dirty do you? He’d have ripped Julia off, no problem. He tried to in fact. Told her the artworks were crude copies, offered to flog them for what he could get.’ Maxwell-Evans snorted. ‘He would have taken the profit without batting an eyelid. He’s a smooth and ruthless businessman, Anna, but he hasn’t got the guts to kill.’ He smiled down at me.
‘You killed her?’
He nodded and there was an awful pride in his eyes. ‘You need a combination of intelligence, strength and balls to go after what you really want,’ he said.
And then he smiled, and took a step towards me.
Chapter Forty-Five
Maxwell-Evans towered over me, the knife clutched tight in his right leather-gloved hand. ‘Give me your phone and the cottage keys, and then turn around, and lean forward on the car bonnet.’
As I handed over my mobile, my hands were shaking. If I’d picked up my message, if I’d talked to Darrick, if I’d left the house just a moment earlier …
‘Go on,’ Maxwell-Evans said. ‘Waiting patiently isn’t one of my strong points.’
I turned slowly and did as he said.
‘Now put your hands behind your back.’
If he was going to tie my wrists he’d have to put down the knife. I tried to turn my head so I could watch for the crucial moment.
He paused. ‘If you look anywhere but straight ahead I’ll slit your throat without a second thought,’ he said, yanking my hair with his left hand so that I had to face straight up the bonnet, towards the windscreen.
Within seconds he had secured my hands. As he pulled me up again and turned me round I tested his work; the knots felt horribly secure.
‘What are you going to do?’ I asked, my throat constricted with fear.
‘I’m taking you back to End House.’
‘But why kill me there?’ I said. ‘Surely Seb can’t have suggested that, if it belongs to him.’
‘It doesn’t,’ Maxwell-Evans said. ‘It’s no wonder you’re in trouble if you keep believing everything everyone tells you.’ His face was in shadow now, but I could hear from his voice that he was smiling. ‘Seb pretended your call to him had dropped so he could work out where to send you.’
Once again I reeled at the thought of Seb, cold and detached, using his intelligence to work out how best to dispose of me. I felt my eyes fill with tears, at my own foolishness for misjudging his character, as much as at his total lack of feeling for me.
‘End House is just another holiday cottage,’ the Professor went on. ‘He stayed there once, a couple of years ago, so it was a simple matter to check on the agents’ website to make sure it was vacant. And of course he knew the drill: where to find the key and so on.’
‘But if it belongs to someone else, anyone could come along at any time,’ I said. ‘The owners might employ a cleaner or something.’ I could hear the rising pitch of desperation in my voice.
He laughed quietly. ‘And you think the cleaner would be booked to come in on a rainy Sunday night in winter? I don’t think so. And I’m not overly worried about passers-by.’ He looked up the deserted road for a moment. ‘This lane doesn’t lead anywhere you know. Beyond the house there’s only a barn and a farm track. That’s why Seb thought it would be so convenient.’
He looked back at me. ‘Once you’re dead, I’m going to send a text using your mobile to get Farron here,’ he said, ‘and then I’ll kill him. Only I’ll remove his body of course, once his DNA and prints are all over the house, so it’ll look as though he killed you and then ran for it.’
He was holding the knife very close to my chest, his face inches from mine, and I could see the fire in his eyes. He was pleased to be running with this plan, glad to be the one putting it into action.
I knew I needed to delay him. ‘The text won’t work,’ I said, trying to think. ‘The police are bound to check my mobile records. It’ll look as though I sent the message after I was already dead. They’ll know someone else was involved.’
Maxwell-Evans smiled. ‘I don’t think so. I’ll be texting within seconds of your demise. Time of death won’t be that accurate – especially given that it’ll probably take some while to find your body. I don’t think people are here that often in winter. Seb said the next booking he found on the internet wasn’t until Christmas.’
He drew in a long breath that conveyed complete relaxation. ‘And think of what your mobile records will show. Conversations with Farron, as well as with Sebastian. You remember you told Seb you actually picked up Farron’s call, but then dropped the phone when you realised it was him? No one else will know you didn’t actually talk.
‘Seb will tell the police he was convinced Farron had killed Toby Mason, and was trying to talk you out of seeing him, but that you wouldn’t take any notice. After all, it’s what everyone’s been trying to do all along: make you see sense and give him up. And everyone knows you haven’t been listening. Seb will tell them that you were insistent on texting Farron to give him the chance to explain, face to face. And when they check they’ll find the record of the SMS sure enough, and that you took a call from him as well.’
Maxwell-Evans put up his left hand to touch my cheek. ‘The first thing Farron will see as he comes through the door will be your body. Quite enough of a distraction to let me get the upper hand.’
Chapter Forty-Six
He paused for a moment and turned to face me. ‘Disloyalty, Anna,’ he said. ‘You’ve only yourself to blame for this. If you hadn’t carried on seeing Farron and believing in his innocence, none of this would be happening. Sebastian did try to warn you. And it’s only because of Farron’s meddling that Toby Mason had to die too. You’ve both got a lot to answer for.’
‘So you made it up here before Darrick did, and killed Toby?’ I was still trying to order the facts in my mind.
‘Not before him,’ Maxwell-Evans said. ‘Very shortly afterwards. As soon as Sebastian told me Farron was onto Mason I knew I had to get up here fast. But time was on my side. Farron was just coming to ask questions. He’d be unlikely to knock on Mason’s door at one in the morning, and he couldn’t manage to arrive any sooner, even if he drove like a maniac.
‘No,’ he went on, raising the knife up now so that it was inches from my throat. ‘I knew he’d have to wait until morning. But if you’re planning a murder there’s no need to wait for daylight. I said I’d run out of petrol, and Toby was terribly helpful. Came out with me to top my car up again and everything. A silk scarf makes one look so respectable. It was an easy matter to silence him before Farron got a look in.’
My mouth was so dry I could hardly talk. ‘So Toby Mason knew, then, about Julia’s drawings?’
Maxwell-Evans nodded. ‘She’d told him, and Sebastian says Mason even knew I was aware of them too. Shame really: he could still have died an old man, never having thought more about it, if no one had interfered. But there was no way I could let him talk to Farron.’
‘But if Darrick never got to talk to Toby Mason, why does he still have to die?’ I said. ‘And why come after me?’
Maxwell-Evans raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m surprised you ask,’ he said. ‘You haven’t been very discreet. Of course, when you asked Sebastian if h
e’d been in touch with me recently, alarm bells rang so loudly you could have heard them in Brighton. He got straight onto me. It was quite clear something had told you I was up to my neck in this business.’
The sequence of events replayed in my mind in awful slow motion. I remembered how I had questioned Seb about Maxwell-Evans, and how flimsy the excuse for my curiosity must have sounded to him. To think that, at the time, I’d seen it as a matter of office politics. I’d been economical with the truth to avoid a row with Radley, little knowing I was signing my own death warrant. And now it was too late to go back.
‘You certainly frightened Sebastian,’ Maxwell-Evans was saying. ‘Predictably, he wanted to save his own skin. The moment he knew you were up here he was all for taking the opportunity to get rid of you and I was in complete agreement. Neither of us could risk you being that close to the truth without joining all the dots.
‘As for leaving Farron alive, that would never do. He’s no fool. He may have thought Seb killed Julia to start with, but it’s my bet he’ll have kept tabs on him. He probably already knows he’s still in London and he’ll be rethinking the whole matter. I have reason to believe he has me down as a second suspect on his list. Rumour has it he’s been sniffing around my affairs.
‘On the other hand, if Farron dies, my problems over Julia die, and he can take the rap for killing Mason.’ He smiled down at me. ‘And you, of course.’
Chapter Forty-Seven
He put an arm around my shoulders, turning me towards the house. ‘Time to walk back now, Anna,’ he said, and he held the knife in front of me in his right hand, hard up against my stomach, pointing towards my heart. I couldn’t even afford to stumble.
All the while we walked one part of my mind was there with the knife, but stray thoughts still managed to gather themselves. ‘So how did you find out about the drawings?’ I asked.
‘All Sebastian’s doing,’ he said. ‘He knew I’d buy them, if he could only persuade Julia to give them up, thinking they were imitations. Part of his plan was to take me up to meet her one weekend. She wouldn’t trust his judgement on the matter, but he thought if I went up too, and told her, as a professor of art history, that they were duds, she’d be more likely to acquiesce.’