“You knew this how? Women’s intuition?” Gordon asked with what Skye took to be condescension.
“No. Not intuition,” she responded firmly. “A sensitivity to nuances in her voice.”
“To be honest,” Fergal continued with the explanation when it seemed Skye had nothing more to say, “we never thought to find her so involved. The last thing we expected when we turned up at her house was to find Jenna and Anne and Diane all there. By the way, the only reason we were in Spain was because both you and Anne had warned us off looking more deeply into anything.”
“That, I have to admit, was very clever on our part. Reverse psychology, Fergal. I knew that if first I, then Anne, suggested you give up you would do the exact opposite and Spain would be exactly where you would head.”
“Are we that predictable?”
“Indeed you are, refreshingly so.”
“I don’t like this,” Skye said firmly. “You knew where Diane was, you knew who had committed the murders yet you let us carry on regardless. Are you going to tell us why?”
“I was just getting to that. As I said, there was always another mystery to be solved and I had reason to believe that mystery might have its roots in a family’s history and that, I have recognised, is a field in which you both are exceptionally talented.”
He paused for a few moments. He did not want Fergal and Skye to think he had used them without recognising their unique areas of expertise. “You, and you alone, were going to cut through all the—”
“Crap,” Skye interjected.
“I was going to say ‘cut through all the fog of history’ but ‘crap’ will probably do.” Gordon smiled at Skye and Fergal felt the increasingly familiar tinge of jealousy where Gordon and Skye were involved.
“Well? Are you going to tell us?” Fergal asked allowing his impatience to show.
“Pat is not here to speak up for herself—”
“Pat?” Skye interrupted. “You wanted us to investigate Pat?”
“We have long been aware that more than a dozen men and women, all soldiers of one sort or another, have made remarkable successes of their lives in Civvy Street. There were, specifically, ten men and two women whom the service did not support when, perhaps, they should have done. There were twelve remarkable people who recovered from grave mental and physical wounds to make incredibly successful lives for themselves. And I use ‘incredibly’ literally. Their success was, literally, unbelievable. We had looked into this and seen that they seemed to have only one thing, or I should say one person, in common—”
“Pat.”
“Yes, Skye, Pat. I’m not saying that no other man or woman made a success of their lives, I’m not saying that no man or woman could not settle back into life successfully after being badly wounded. What I am saying, what I do say needed explanation, is that Pat’s success rate was incredible; as I say, it was literally unbelievable. Her protégés have always done remarkably well for themselves. None has ended up in jail as so many veterans do, none had money troubles, none with psychiatric problems. There was a pattern, established over the years, that had to be explained. We needed to know if it was her own personal qualities, of which there are undoubtedly many, or was it something else? We did not know. We have been keeping an eye on anyone connected with any of her protégés, including young Ryan, and that led us to a close watch on Beausale when another of our watched joined the same crew. Then Eden was murdered and it seemed there was a complicated linkage that required unravelling, especially when the young man himself died. This seemed the ideal opportunity to learn the secret, if there was one, of Pat’s success.”
“You wanted us to investigate Pat all along?” Skye asked, bewildered.
Gordon nodded. “We have long wondered whether there was some secret we should have identified and you found it.”
“Luis’s treasures,” Skye said firmly.
“Diane knew about the treasure. Pat told her all about Luis’s gold,” Fergal pointed out, looking across the room at Diane who had been silent throughout the meeting and showed no sign of giving an explanation now.
“Unfortunately, and I’m sure you agree with me, Diane, you would never have told me. You would never have talked about what you had found and what Pat had told you, now would you?”
Diane shook her head. “Probably not. Skye, Fergal, you have to understand, there is an unwritten code of loyalty. One doesn’t share another’s secrets as you never know when you are going to hope that other keeps yours.”
“So it was down to outsiders to solve the mystery of how well all Pat’s young people have done over the years and you were those outsiders.”
“I can’t see that it was simply a coincidence that the solution to your problem lay with the Eden family, a member of which was involved in Diane’s disappearance,” Fergal said with a degree of disbelief.
“We don’t believe in coincidences,” Skye added.
“What made you think investigating the Edens would lead us to Pat?” Fergal asked, genuinely wanting an answer. “It can’t just have been the Spanish connection or that you thought we would call on her as a last resort when neither you nor Anne answered any of our perfectly sensible questions.”
“You’re going to make me admit to knowing something else, aren’t you?” Gordon asked with what Fergal thought was an undue degree of smugness.
“Indeed we are,” Fergal said firmly.
“We knew of one, and only one, snippet of information. We knew that Harry Bush had enquired about a Spanish boy, a refugee from their Civil War. We knew no details and we did not know what the result of his enquiry was. No doubt we could have discovered had we had the time and resources and had it been at the top of our list of things to do—”
“But it never was.”
“No, Skye, it never was. Not until the Eden man came to prominence and was murdered.”
“That was what you wanted us to do all along?” Fergal asked. “Nothing about abductions and murders, you just pointed us in the direction of Pat and Spain and hoped we would find out the answers.”
“And were we wrong? Did you stick to your brief? No. Did you investigate the Eden family? Yes. Did you find out more than we could possibly ever have known without your assistance? Yes. Can you explain not only how Pat got hold of the treasure but also how that treasure came to be in the first place? Yes, you can and yes, you will. This was the mystery we set you to solve.”
“Like little wound-up clockwork mice?” Skye asked.
“Like little wound-up clockwork pawns,” Fergal corrected.
Gordon sat back, satisfied. “Now you may explain the details. I think we’re ready to listen and learn.”
“Luis must have told Pat about the boxes of treasure,” Fergal began.
“He did,” Diane confirmed. “He lived in Altea after the war, the Civil War that is, and Pat told me she and Harry knew him well.”
“He will have told her what Fernando, the son of the Jiménez family’s gardener, told us,” Fergal continued, “that Luis had buried all the gold and jewellery he had stolen from his father along with the bag of books and writings that his friend, Federico Garcia Lorca, the poet, gave him in the hope that they would survive the war as he knew he would not.”
“They did,” Gordon accepted with a nod. “They are now in the hands of Luis’s great-granddaughter, Jenna, who, I am delighted to say, has control of those Lorca drafts and is making very good use of them.”
“Wasn’t she was studying Modern European Literature?” Skye asked.
“Indeed she was. Now she has control of these wonderful documents she will go from strength to strength. She has already been offered a place at a university in Madrid.”
“I’m sure we’re all very pleased for her.” Diane tried to sound generous.
“Those papers were not all that was left of Luis’s hoard. There had bee
n a vast treasure, an incalculable amount of jewellery and money, that is nowhere near being all used up.” Fergal resumed his explanation.
“How can you know that?” Anne asked.
“Easy. After the Civil War Luis returned to his home in Illora to check that his box was safe. He was in no position to remove it but Fernando, his family’s old gardener, dug it up and made an inventory which he handed to his son who gave it to us.”
“And we now give it to you.” Skye took the sheet of paper from her bag and handed it to Gordon who read it.
“My God!” he exclaimed. “All this! I had no idea! No wonder they did so well.”
“So what about the second hoard?” Anne asked. “There were two Luis hoards, right? Pat said as much.”
“Absolutely. There was this one from his family but there were also the boxes of gold Luis told Harry and Pat that he just found lying around in the Spanish countryside in the middle of a war.”
“I just don’t get that,” Anne said, disbelievingly. “No one carelessly loses a fortune in gold, war or no war.”
“Pat said something about gold being transported by train.” Diane was remembering the conversation she had had when Pat had first told her about Luis’s treasure. She caught Gordon’s eye. “We were talking about the war in Cartagena,” she explained hurriedly, having realised that she had just almost admitted to having known Pat’s secret.
“I think I can explain how it happened.” Fergal put down his glass so he could concentrate on his explanation. “In September 1936 Spanish gold reserves were taken from the Bank of Spain in Madrid and transported, heavily escorted via railway, to Cartagena. Cartagena was hundreds of kilometres from the fighting fronts, it was the main port of the Republicans, it was heavily guarded and it was thought the gold would be safer there than in the soon-to-be-besieged capital. In all, over half a million kilos of gold coins in sixteen different currencies and more in gold ingots, a total of 500 million grams of crude gold, valued at half a billion US dollars not counting the additional numismatic value of many of the coins to collectors. It was the nation’s wealth transported by train.”
“Risky,” Diane commented drily.
“Undoubtedly, and inevitably perhaps, some of the gold went missing en route; no one knows how much was lost. Counts of what left Madrid, what arrived in Cartagena and what was shipped to the USSR, of all places, do not tally. It’s known that at least a hundred bags and boxes of gold coins went missing, some undoubtedly on the railway journey to Cartagena. There are reports that boxes of gold were thrown out of the train by the guards who meant to pick up the boxes later. Luis’s second treasure, the one in Pat’s basement, was probably amongst those. Since he wouldn’t have been a guard on the train he must just have, fortuitously, come across it. He may well have told Pat the whys and wherefores but she hasn’t told us.”
“What happened to the other ninety-eight?” Diane asked, intrigued.
“Who knows? Lots of people made a lot of money out of that dreadful war and the dictatorship that followed. Questions would not have been asked when someone suddenly became unexpectedly rich.”
“Don’t you think it’s ironic?” Skye asked breaking the silence that followed Fergal’s lecture.
“What, dear girl?” Gordon asked.
“That the one person in the family who made the most money—”
“Stratford?”
“Yes, Luis’s son, Stratford. He made the most money and he did it all off his own bat. With no help from anyone. No inheritance, no theft, no fortuitous finding of gold.”
“Maybe there’s a moral there somewhere.” Gordon made the point no one could answer.
“So what’s going to happen to Pat?” Diane asked. “Will she be hauled over the coals?”
“She has handed over what remains of Luis’s hoards and as far as we can tell made no personal gain whatsoever from any of it so there will be no repercussions. We are just pleased that the mystery that has worried us for some time has been solved. I have to say there were some in my department who imagined far worse than this. We are just pleased that we have the answer and no harm had been done to anyone.”
“Have we done what you expected us to?” Fergal asked.
Gordon nodded.
“Have we passed the test? First Alex, now Pat.”
“Yes, Skye, you have.”
“So what mystery do you have for us to solve next?” she asked.
Gordon Hamilton smiled and closed his eyes against the glare of the low evening sun, making it very clear he had no intention of answering any more questions.
Carolyn McCrae
Second Strand
Alex and Teri are on the verge of breaking up when their elderly neighbour is brutally murdered. Two days later Alex, the police’s only suspect, disappears without trace.
While the police enquiries are hampered by unexplained bureaucratic delays Teri hires two independent investigators, Skye and Fergal, to track Alex down and persuade him to return to answer the allegations against him.
When DNA evidence proves that Alex is the victim’s son investigations into the details of his life, and that of his father, prove to be far more difficult than they should have been.
As Skye and Fergal understand more about the events leading to a previous, still unsolved, murder, it becomes clear that Alex’s fate is being determined by the actions, more than thirty years in the past, of men long dead.
Paperback
ISBN 978-178589838-9
And eBook:
Carolyn McCrae
Her Parents’ Daughter
When a murder is committed in full view of a number of eminently respectable witnesses the police appear to have an open and shut case on their hands.
Or did they jump to an easy conclusion because the victim was one of their own?
Perhaps the victim was not as innocent nor the accused as guilty as the prosecution make them out to be.
Perhaps the accused was really the victim.
Perhaps, if her parents had not made an enemy of the man they met in the embassy in Moscow, she would not be on trial, sixty years later, for a murder she was certain she could not have committed.
Paperback
ISBN 978-1786070129
Hardback
ISBN 978-1785070136
And eBook
Carolyn McCrae
A Set of Lies
‘History is a set of lies agreed upon’
Napoleon Bonaparte
Has the accepted history of the past two hundred years of English history really been ‘a set of lies agreed upon’ by the politicians of the day?
A storm leads to a discovery that puts a large question mark over the traditionally accepted events of 19th century history.
Skye Lacey, the illegitimate daughter of a prominent right-wing politician, realises that if she can prove her suspicions true she can sabotage her father’s extreme plans for the future of Great Britain.
With two unlikely collaborators, and through an exploration of the lives of six generations of the Lacey family, Skye discovers evidence that proves an unlikely hypothesis and makes the events of two centuries ago impact on the modern world.
Paperback
ISBN 987-1784622763
And eBook
Carolyn McCrae
Highly Unsuitable Girl
There were always two very different sides to Anya Cave.
Some who knew her when she was young saw an intelligent, attractive girl who would go far but always too close to the surface was the uglier Anya: p
romiscuous, self-obsessed and manipulative.
Despite her self-willed drive to better herself, the course of Anya’s life is determined by a succession of mistakes whose roots lie in the unfortunate circumstances of her birth.
A successful career and financial security are meaningless as her middle years are wasted in a loveless second marriage. It is only after Anya marries for a third time that she finds some purpose in her life.
At her lowest ebb she meets three men from very different stages of her life who separately make her face up to how she has misjudged others.
Only when she recognises how much she has misunderstood about herself can she identify which Anya is the winner in her lifelong battle between the woman she has been and the one she wants to be.
Paperback
ISBN 978-1780880662
And eBook
Carolyn McCrae
The Iniquities Trilogy
A century of lives determined by the sins of parents
The Last Dance (Iniquities Trilogy 1)
The respectable façade of the Donaldson family in provincial Cheshire through the years following the Second World War is just that - a façade.
Arnold and Alicia married for the wrong reasons - Arnold because she was perfect for his needs and Alicia because she had no alternative.
Hostage to Fortune Page 33