“That seems perfectly reasonable.”
“I’m sure that’s what he will try to do.” Diane felt she was in a better position than the others to anticipate what Guy might do.
Anne disagreed. “But he can’t do that. Not so openly. He’ll obviously be guilty and then he won’t be able to benefit from his crimes. Everything he has done will have been for nothing.”
“That’s right,” Fergal agreed with Anne. “They won’t get as far as the water. There’ll be an accident. They’ll be crossing a road through traffic and he’ll get through and—”
“She won’t.” Skye finished her husband’s sentence for him.
“Don’t you think that’s a bit desperate?” Anne asked, trying to keep control.
“I’m certain he’s thinking that desperate times call for desperate measures,” Pat said firmly.
“He thought he would only be dealing with one, no doubt helpless, girl and one, also no doubt helpless, elderly lady,” Fergal pointed out.
“He was wrong, wasn’t he?” Pat replied tartly.
They were too late to prevent the accident.
As they drove into the village they saw the crowd in the road.
“What’s that all about?” Skye asked Fergal, who carefully parked the car several yards from the melee. “I do hope it’s not what I think it is.”
“It looks like I might have been right,” Fergal answered slowly. “Guy has manufactured his accident.”
Skye looked at him and frowned. “You cannot have known that he’d do that?”
“It seemed pretty obvious really. He couldn’t let her go on, could he? And he couldn’t be put in any position where he might have been responsible for her death, could he?”
“No.”
“So it had to be an accident. And it had to be soon.”
“Poor girl, she seemed so sweet, so caught up in everyone else’s problems,” Skye said as she slowly opened the car door, stepped out and hand in hand with her husband headed for the throng clustered around the body in the road. “I wish there could have been something we could have done to save her.”
“I couldn’t stop!” the distraught Englishman was trying to explain to anyone who would listen. “I’m so sorry!” He turned to the crowd, speaking to no one in particular. “I couldn’t help it! He just ran straight out in front of me.”
Skye, seeing the young woman sitting on a low wall, let go of Fergal’s hand and moved through the crowd to sit next to her.
“What happened, Jenna?”
“It was so strange.”
“Strange?”
“When we were talking in Pat’s cellar, he almost seemed nice, gentle, concerned, you know. He was flirting, you know, almost trying to get off with me. When he grabbed me and ran away, I sort of went along with it. I didn’t want to go but I did want to hear his side of the story. All I’d heard about him was what Anne had told me and it didn’t seem to square up. He seemed nice, not the psychopath Anne had described.”
“It is said psychopaths can be very charming when it suits them,” Skye pointed out.
“I thought he just wanted to go somewhere to talk.”
“And?”
“He said we had to get down here, to the village. I wanted to go back to the house. I was beginning to see he wasn’t quite as nice as he had seemed.”
Skye looked at the marks on Jenna’s arms. She could clearly see the bruises forming where strong fingers had gripped her.
“He dragged you down here?”
Jenna nodded. “Then I had to stop for breath.”
“Yes?” Skye asked gently when Jenna didn’t continue.
“We sat down. On a rock. And he tried to kiss me.”
“Kiss you?” Skye was mystified.
“He was really forceful. He pulled at my clothes. I thought for a moment he was going to rape me. I pushed him away.”
“Did he take ‘no’ for an answer?” Skye asked tentatively, unwilling to press Jenna on such a sensitive matter.
“Sort of.”
“Sort of?”
“He kept trying to kiss me. I kept pushing him away and trying to make him realise I wasn’t interested.”
“And?” Skye hoped her questions about what had happened didn’t make her sound prurient.
“I asked how old he was.”
“You asked him what?” Skye was not expecting that.
“I pushed him away and told him I was twenty-seven years old, nearly thirty, and not in the least interested in a boy his age.”
“And?”
“He said he wasn’t a boy and kept pawing at me. I had to get harder on him; I called him a little boy, a child and that when he had grown up some girl might be interested in him.”
“I can’t see that going down well.”
“It didn’t. For a few seconds I thought he was going to hit me but then he just said, very quietly, quite menacingly really, that he was old enough.”
“Old enough for what? What did he mean?”
“He didn’t say at first. I thought he meant to have sex.”
“You say he didn’t say ‘at first’; what did he say later?”
“He said he was old enough to do things men twice his age wouldn’t dare do.”
“Did he say what?”
“No. He just kept saying he wasn’t a boy, he was a man. I thought he was quite pathetic really, getting so upset over a stupid word, but he was really, really, upset.”
“Did he tell you how old he was?”
“No. Do you know? You seem to know a lot about him.”
“He’s just twenty-one.”
“Just a boy. I was right. Just a boy. I didn’t think he was even that old.”
“So he’s upset that you called him a boy. What did he do then?”
“He grabbed my hand. He said he was sorry, he was sorry there was no other way. He said there wasn’t enough time, he didn’t have enough time. You’d all be down from the villa on the hill and he had to do it quickly.”
“Do what?”
“I couldn’t hear. He was ahead of me. Pulling my hand so hard my arm felt it would come out of its socket. I couldn’t hear much of what he said apart from that he was sorry it had to happen this way.”
“And?”
“When we reached the village he was scared. He was looking up and down the road. I thought he looked terrified you’d all be waiting for him. Then he said something odd.”
“Odd?”
“He said he could handle all the women it was the man. I asked him what man. I thought I should try to talk to him so I asked him what man he meant.”
“And?”
“He said the man in the cellar had been at the funeral.”
“The man in the cellar? Fergal? My husband?”
“He said he’d found him.”
Skye was mystified. Who had Guy thought Fergal was?
“Did he say who he thought he was?”
Jenna shook her head. “No. He just said there was no way out and then he began to run. He was running towards the road. At first he had hold of my hand but then he let go.” She held up her hand as if it was, in some way, responsible. “I could see the car coming. He must have seen it too. But he just kept on running.”
“He let go of you?” Skye asked, realising that it had been no accident and trying to understand what had been going through Guy’s mind. “He let go of you deliberately?”
“He half-turned, looking at me. I’ll never forget that look. It was questioning, as if he didn’t understand what was happening, then… then… the car… Oh it was horrible! Is he dead?”
Skye nodded slowly. “It would seem so.”
“He just ran into the road. I couldn’t do anything.”
“There was nothing you could have done.” Skye t
ried to give some comfort to a clearly shocked Jenna. “Nothing.”
“Was it my fault? He changed when we left the cellar. Was it my fault for calling him a boy? Why would calling him a boy upset him so much?”
Skye thought carefully before answering.
If Guy’s death was anyone’s fault but his own it was Fergal’s.
Guy had seen him at Warwick’s funeral.
When they had all descended to the cellar he had recognised him.
He could have thought Fergal was a member of England Force tracking him down. He could have thought he was a policeman, following him, about to arrest him. Whichever way he would have known he was no longer in control of his destiny and must have believed there could be no escape.
“He was a cold and calculating killer, Jenna. He was a psychopath. He could appear perfectly normal, charming even, but he was manipulative and self-centred with no inner voice to tell him that what he was doing was wrong.”
“What did he do?”
“He did everything Anne told you. He killed three people and tried to kill more. He made a perfectly decent man care for him so he could use him. He would have made you care for him if you had given him the chance.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Your father’s money. If he had been able to worm his way into your affections, even get you to marry him, he would have got to the money he probably honestly and truly believed should have been his.”
Jenna shook her head slowly from side to side. “So this was all about money?”
“Money and an incredibly misplaced sense of justice.”
Chapter 34: Gordon
A week later, with October mists hanging over the River Dart, Diane welcomed Fergal and Skye into her home.
“Hello Anne, Gordon.” Fergal nodded at each in turn.
“Fergal, Skye,” Gordon acknowledged. “Let’s all sit down.”
“A little more than two and a half months since we last met,” Fergal said calmly, as he took the glass of wine from Diane.
“Indeed.”
“And a pretty eventful two and a half months they’ve been too,” Skye said as she joined Fergal on the settee, a large glass of wine in her hands.
“Anne? Will you start this debrief?” Gordon said giving Anne no option but to do just that.
Anne took out her tablet and began to read from her notes, even though she knew every aspect of the story by heart. “The simple, tabloid version is that Jenna is the sole heir to her father’s fortune. No mention has been made publicly of Guy Cliffe, or of Barford Eden, or of Brian Cliffe for that matter.”
“I think we can thank Anne and the department for keeping a lid on that,” Gordon explained, nodding acknowledgement to Anne.
“So Jenna inherits everything?” Skye asked.
Gordon nodded. “Whether she likes it or not she is the undisputed heir. We have affidavits and DNA. There is no doubt she is Warwick’s daughter and there is no doubt there is no one else to come forward.”
“She won’t like that.”
“Once the estate is hers she can do what she likes with it, give it all away to refugee charities for all anyone cares.”
“She was very interested in the boxes in Pat’s basement, wasn’t she?” Skye asked, knowing she was opening a bag of worms.
“Indeed she was,” Gordon nodded, smiling, so Skye didn’t think she had done anything wrong by raising the issue. “Now, Skye, and you, Fergal, do you think you have completed a job well done?”
They did not, at first, realise how subtly he had changed the subject. “We found Diane,” Skye said with some pride.
“Certainly you pointed us in the direction of Peabody Three but she wasn’t lost by the time you showed up and, to be honest, we pretty much knew where she was the whole time.”
“But you didn’t rescue her?” Skye asked.
“No, we trusted she could look after herself. Which, of course, she did. Just. When we learned she was with Pat there was nothing more for us to worry about.”
“But you didn’t tell us?”
“No, no we didn’t,” Gordon admitted somewhat sheepishly, though he gave no explanation.
“And we’ve basically solved three murders,” Skye pointed out. “Warwick was killed by Guy, Ryan was framed having been murdered by Guy and Arjun, and then Arjun was drowned when Guy had no further use for him.”
“I’ll grant that you seem to have accurately pinpointed the guilty parties here but to be honest, as I said, we pretty much knew what was going on from the beginning. We aren’t completely without resources, you know. Anne is part of a team who can read beyond what local police say and it was pretty clear from the outset who was responsible.”
“Then why the call? Why involve us?” Fergal asked, genuinely unsure what the reason could have been.
Gordon sat back, turning his bare feet in the autumn sunlight. “Let me begin at the beginning.”
“Always a good place to start,” Skye said facetiously.
Gordon ignored her. “We knew almost as soon as Diane did that she was being held, first on Beausale and then on Peabody Three, stupid name for a boat by the way. Your information simply confirmed what we had already suspected.”
“So we were only a second string? Backup?” Fergal asked, hurt.
“Not just that. I had always had another task for you—”
“Solving Warwick Eden’s murder,” Skye interrupted looking at Fergal and silently mouthing ‘pawns’. Fergal nodded his agreement.
They turned back to Gordon as he continued. “Not exactly.”
“Well what ‘exactly’?” Skye asked.
Gordon chose not to comment on her sarcasm and continued his explanation. “We knew Warwick Eden was dead before I called you. That was why I knew I had to involve you. I knew you would not be able to help yourselves looking into that crime rather than concentrating on Diane’s disappearance. You have to admit I was right.”
“Perhaps,” Fergal admitted reluctantly.
“We have recognised your talent for thinking… how do people describe it? ‘Outside the box’? Yes, we hoped you would soon be delving into dark corners and, sure enough, it was not long before you were.”
“You wanted us to investigate the Eden family?” Skye asked. “If you wanted us to do that why didn’t you just ask?”
“I suppose we could have done, but this way everything was so much more fun. No, seriously, we weren’t sure what questions we should ask and if we had asked the wrong ones we might have constrained your investigation unnecessarily. This way you set your own targets without boundaries.”
“I suppose that makes some sort of sense,” Fergal admitted warily.
“Warwick’s brother Barford was, of course, known to me and also his link to Diane,” Gordon continued. “We didn’t think it would be long before you would find this connection and follow where it took you, that is to the Eden family background. Of course we have done our background checks on Warwick Eden, especially when he became a potent political force, but then those checks are only required to answer very specific questions. ‘Where was he born?’ ‘Where did he go to school?’ ‘Who has he consorted with?’ That sort of thing. I am ashamed to admit we did not know about Jenna. That is, we knew about Jenna, but we thought she was Barford’s daughter, not Warwick’s. You see we are not infallible.” He paused and smiled at Skye who, to Fergal’s annoyance, smiled back.
“So since family history is our area of expertise you brought us on board?” Fergal asked.
“I have to reluctantly admit that you and your lady wife have a knack for that area of investigation, way beyond anyone else on my team.”
“So you wanted us to look into Warwick and Stratford Eden all along?” Skye asked, feeling more and more that she and Fergal had been manipulated.
“They were certainl
y a start. We had faith in you, firstly that you would not be able to resist the challenge and secondly that you would meet that challenge and come up with the goods. Which, I am happy to admit, you have done.”
“You used us?”
“That is, I believe, what should be expected? You work for us therefore you are used by us.”
It was a harsh assessment that neither Skye nor Fergal could argue against, though it didn’t make either feel any happier.
“We weren’t expecting the second murder, of John O’Donnell’s son, Patrick O’Donnell’s nephew,” Gordon continued, ignoring Skye and Fergal’s obvious hurt feelings. “We knew he was on board Eden’s yacht but we did not know why. It was fairly obvious from the outset that Guy had killed him and that murder linked two of our people: Guy to Diane via his father and Ryan, via John and Patrick, to Pat. I was intrigued to see where the trail would lead you.” Gordon paused, put his hands in his characteristic church steeple position. “By the way, what made you focus in on Pat? You could not have known her connection to the O’Donnell family.”
Something about the way Gordon was trying to appear casual made Fergal suspicious, so he was wary with his answer. “You are right, when we first heard about Ryan O’Donnell we had no idea about his Uncle Patrick’s links to Pat. We were focusing on Guy and the Cliffes. Since Diane was unavailable—”
“Being held captive on a yacht,” Skye interrupted to explain.
“And you were giving us no real answers to any of our questions,” Fergal accused Gordon. “We turned to the only other person we thought might know something about who might have been a guest in Diane’s safe house. Pat.”
Skye took over the explanation. “So I phoned her and asked her some questions but it was obvious she wasn’t answering them honestly.”
“We couldn’t know, then, that she was more concerned about our finding a link between the O’Donnell family and her than the Eden family and Diane,” Fergal added.
“But she really didn’t seem to be telling us the truth about anything,” Skye continued. “Especially when we knew Peabody Three was not far from her and we asked her to take a look. She didn’t seem in any sort of hurry; she seemed, if anything, not to want to find Diane. She just didn’t seem to be being honest with us.”
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