Legacy of Lies

by Jane A. Adams

  ‘Naomi? You sound upset? What’s wrong?’

  The story spilled out. The men who’d come to Fallowfields, Alec being attacked. The mystery surrounding Rupert’s death.

  Harry broke in before she was really through. ‘Naomi, where are you staying?’

  Momentarily confused, she told him.

  ‘Then just hang on for a couple of hours and we’ll be there.’

  ‘No, Harry, I can’t ask you to …’ Though she realized as he said it that this was exactly what she’d hoped he’d do.

  ‘Don’t be silly. What else would we do? Now, have you had anything to eat?’

  ‘No, I don’t suppose I have.’

  ‘Then get on to room service and order yourself a decent meal. Patrick and I will be with you as soon as we can.’

  Naomi rang off. Relief flooded through her and her hands shook. She felt suddenly drained and also very hungry. She fumbled with the room phone, trying to remember what Alec had told her about getting through to reception and, more by luck than anything else, managed to order sandwiches and tea.

  ‘A man just called,’ the girl told her. ‘Someone called Harry Jones? He said he was a friend and booked a room for himself and his son.’

  Naomi replied to the question the girl had made of this statement. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘He said he was coming. Yes, he’s a good friend.’

  A very good friend, she thought as she put the receiver back on to its cradle, feeling carefully to make sure it was properly seated.

  She thought of all the four of them, Alec and Harry and Patrick and her and all they had been through in the past few years, and she was relieved beyond words that soon she would not be alone.

  Sixteen

  The side ward was rather crowded. Naomi hoped that the nursing staff would continue with their tolerant attitude; the number of visitors allowed technically being only two per bed and with Harry, Patrick and herself they were already one over.

  DS Fine’s arrival added to the visitor infringement.

  Naomi introduced Patrick and Harry, and Fine greeted them with an air of formality that jarred Naomi’s senses, setting them on edge.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she demanded.

  ‘That obvious, am I?’

  She shrugged. She heard Fine pull up a chair and deposit something papery on Alec’s bed. ‘Recognize anyone, Alec?’

  She listened, straining for audible clues as Alec picked up the folder and flicked through the pages.

  ‘Him,’ he said at last.

  ‘You’re certain?’

  ‘I’m certain. I got a decent look at him, both when I was following him across the square and when he had me by the throat.’

  ‘Right,’ Fine said.

  ‘So? Tell,’ Naomi prompted.

  ‘We found a partial print on the doorframe at the house.’

  ‘He put his hand on the door,’ Naomi remembered.

  ‘Most of the print was smudged, but there was a partial of the index finger. There aren’t enough points of similarity for it to stand up in court but enough for us to run the print. We got a match. This man. Alec just picked him out from a sample of twenty mugshots,’ Fine explained for Naomi’s benefit.

  She nodded. She knew how it was done. There had to be a selection available for the witness to choose from or the accusation could be levelled that the officer was leading the witness. Or, in this case, the victim. ‘So, who is he?’

  ‘His name,’ Fine said slowly, ‘is Samuel Kinnear and if ever a man needed to go on an anger management course, it’s him.’

  ‘Kinnear,’ Alec mused. ‘There’s something familiar …’

  ‘Armed robbery seems to have been his speciality, but he’s implicated in everything from murder to extortion. Been inside for the last fifteen; released eighteen months ago. His parole officer lost track ten days in and no one’s seen hide nor hair since.’

  ‘So, what’s he doing here?’

  ‘That’s what we’d all like to know,’ Fine said, ‘and by all I include our friends in the Met. Kinnear’s a long way from his home patch.’

  ‘London?’ Alec was surprised.

  ‘With a career that stretches back to the Kray twins,’ Fine confirmed. ‘Rumour, only on that score, but rumour says he worked as an enforcer and he wasn’t too particular on whose behalf he enforced, provided they paid up.’

  ‘He’s not a young man,’ Alec said thoughtfully. ‘I’d say he had a good ten, fifteen years on me.’

  ‘Date of birth 1952,’ Fine said. ‘So that makes him, what, fifty-four?’

  ‘So …’ Naomi calculated what she could recall about the gangland situation in Kray’s London. ‘He must have caught that particular wave at the tail end and only been young. Eighteen, twenty maybe.’

  ‘That fits with the rumours,’ Fine told her. ‘He was an army brat, grew up following his old man across Europe and the Middle East. The family settled in the East End when his father left the forces. Samuel didn’t seem to get along with his old man and left the family home soon after, but he was trouble even before that. Got himself thrown out of two different schools by the time he was fifteen, charged with assault when he was seventeen. Charges were dropped …’ He paused. ‘Alec, I don’t have many details, I’m afraid, and I can’t begin to guess what his connection with your uncle might have been, but—’

  ‘But it sounds as though I got off lightly,’ Alec finished. ‘Reg, you’re not going to like what I’m planning.’

  Naomi could hear the frown in Fine’s voice. ‘Which is what?’

  ‘I’m moving back to Fallowfields.’

  ‘You’re right. I don’t like it. Alec, my advice would be for you and Naomi and your friends to get off home. End it here, let us sort this one out.’

  ‘I can’t do that,’ Alec told him. ‘Whatever this Kinnear is after might well be at Fallowfields or, at any rate, there might be something to explain what’s going on. I agree, Naomi and the others should go—’

  ‘Well, Naomi doesn’t agree,’ she told him tartly.

  ‘Naomi, I don’t have the resources to—’

  ‘Um, I don’t think you’ll need them,’ Harry informed him. ‘Patrick and I will stay. We’re with Alec on this.’

  ‘Harry?’

  ‘Alec, if the roles were reversed, you and Naomi would be there. You’ve both proved that time and again. I’ll make arrangements for new doors, locks, maybe a panic button?’

  ‘I can arrange a direct line, yes,’ Fine conceded.

  ‘That’s good,’ Harry said. ‘And maybe you know a decent locksmith?’

  Fine sighed. ‘I can manage that as well. But Alec, Harry … I don’t think—’

  ‘What you mean,’ Patrick butted in, ‘is that you don’t see how my dad and Alec can protect a blind woman and a boy.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to put it quite like that.’

  ‘’S’all right,’ Patrick told him. ‘We’ve been in worse scrapes. And Dad’s right. You don’t walk out on a friend.’

  Fine left soon after and so did Harry, Patrick staying on to help with the practicalities of Naomi getting back to the hotel. ‘I’ve brought your laptop,’ Naomi told Alec, ‘and the disks and your other stuff. Keep you out of mischief.’

  ‘Thanks, love. But I’ll be out sometime today.’

  ‘You won’t,’ she told him. ‘I talked to the ward sister this morning. They want you here for another day.’

  ‘Then I’ll discharge myself.’

  ‘No. No, you won’t. I’m fine now. I have Harry and Patrick and you need more time to heal and rest. Alec, I’m not going to argue about this. Play with your files and get some rest and I’ll be back for proper visiting this afternoon.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Alec protested.

  ‘So fine you got out of bed this morning and fell flat on your face. That fine? The sister told on you.’

  ‘Vertigo. That’s all.’

  ‘I’m not listening.’

  She got up from her seat by his bed
and kissed him. ‘Nothing is ever simple, is it?’

  ‘No,’ Alec agreed regretfully. ‘It never is.’

  They left the ward and collected Napoleon from his place in the waiting room. Patrick took her arm and Naomi reflected that he seemed to have grown again. She thought of the shy fourteen year old he had been when she had first met him three years before, small for his age and terribly unsure of himself. Patrick had grown up.

  She paused to switch her phone back on and found she had a missed call: Marcus.

  Of course, she hadn’t told him what had happened to Alec.

  Once in the taxi she called him back. ‘Are we still on for Fallowfields today?’ he wanted to know.

  She had, she realized, forgotten all about the promised search. To be reminded now was irrationally and absurdly irritating. ‘No,’ she told him. ‘It won’t be possible.’ Quickly and perhaps more acerbically than his enquiry had warranted, she told him why.

  Marcus was shocked; she could hear it in his voice, but to her astonishment, once he had expressed his horror and his sympathy he asked again, ‘So we won’t be going to Fallowfields today?’

  ‘No, Marcus. Frankly, that’s the last thing on my mind just now.’

  ‘Naomi dear, if you gave me the key, I could make a start. One less job for you.’

  Naomi frowned. ‘For one thing, Marcus, it isn’t just a question of the key. The police secured the doors and windows. It will take more than a key to get in. For another, I’d much rather wait until Alec is up and about before we do anything more.’

  Silence on the other end of the phone. She could feel Marcus working out what to say next. Why so impatient? she wondered. What was so important?

  ‘Marcus? Are you still there?’

  ‘Of course. I’m sorry, of course. You must be too concerned about Alec to want the bother of such secondary things.’

  ‘I’ll call you, let you know.’

  ‘Problems?’ Patrick asked as she rang off.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Naomi told him, wondering at the tension in Marcus’s voice. It came to her again that there was something Marcus wasn’t telling.

  Seventeen

  Two days later they returned en mass to Fallowfields. Harry had been as good as his word. New locks secured the front door and the French windows had been reinforced and re-glazed with a deadbolt added.

  ‘Best we could do with that.’ Harry was apologetic. ‘Anything more would have meant replacing the entire lot and that’s a major undertaking. Be a shame, anyway, to take the French windows away and replace them with one of those patio things.’

  Naomi stepped out on to the terrace. She listened to the garden noises as she had on the day the men had broken in. Somehow, she had expected them to have changed, to have registered the aggression and violence that had interrupted the peace of this garden, but the birds sang and the trees whispered and the scent of roses continued to fragrance the air. She breathed deep and tried to relax.

  She hadn’t wanted to come back here and her palms felt clammy, sweat trickled down into the waistband of her linen trousers. Her head felt as though a band had been tightened around it; a band with extendable rods that reached down to press upon her shoulders.

  ‘We started to clear up the mess,’ Patrick said, ‘but we only did enough to make the floor safe for Napoleon. There was broken glass and stuff.’

  Napoleon, Naomi smiled, not her. Patrick had his priorities right.

  ‘We thought we should leave it in case the stuff they chucked about might give us a clue to what they were looking for.’

  ‘Did they go upstairs?’ Marcus asked.

  ‘Um, yes,’ Harry said. ‘Into the study.’

  ‘The study?’ Naomi was puzzled. ‘No, the police arrived. They didn’t have time to get into the study.’

  ‘Which means they came back later.’ Alec’s tone was flat, emotionless. He had been discharged the evening before and spent a restless night at the hotel. He was still in pain from his ribs, Naomi knew, but more than that, he’d had time for the implications of the attack to sink in and to consider what might have happened to Naomi had the police not arrived.

  He was not a happy man.

  ‘Fine didn’t know about the second break-in?’

  ‘Fine secured the place as best he could but he didn’t have the resources to keep anyone on watch. Harry, did you notice anything when you got here? Was the place secure?’

  ‘The front was and the side gate. To be truthful I didn’t take a good look round the back. DS Fine sorted out the locksmith and the carpenter and I just waited for them to arrive and left them to it. I mean, I did stay, but I sat in the car and listened to the radio, I’m afraid. I didn’t like to, you know, go inside until I had you with me.’

  Harry and his old fashioned sensibilities, Naomi thought.

  ‘Well, we should let Reg Fine know,’ Alec said. ‘And meantime, everyone keep out of the study. I doubt there’ll be prints but you never know.’

  ‘But the study …’ Marcus began. ‘Surely that is likely to be … Anyway, don’t you already have prints from that terrible man?’

  ‘We’ve identified one,’ Alec said. ‘We know there were two. Until the crime scene investigator’s had another chance to look around we keep out.’

  ‘What state’s the kitchen in?’ Naomi asked. ‘If Patrick gives me a hand I’ll make us all some coffee.’

  Setting Napoleon free to wander in the garden, she and Patrick made their way back through the dining room and into the kitchen. She could hear Alec taking charge and allocating tasks. ‘Watch the steps,’ she told Patrick. ‘The kitchen is on a slightly lower level.’ She reflected that to an outsider it might sound odd to be giving that advice to a sighted person but she knew Patrick. He’d grown fast lately and seemed not to have worked out yet where his newly extended limbs ended. She closed the door behind them.

  ‘Open the back door, will you, Patrick. Let some fresh air in. Then you can tell me what you don’t like about our friend Marcus.’

  Patrick laughed. She heard him release the bolts on the heavy door. ‘They didn’t come through here anyway,’ he said.

  ‘Good to know.’ She found the kettle, filled it. ‘We’ll need extra mugs. Second cupboard on the right. No, your other right. So, Marcus?’

  She heard him open the cupboard and remove china, placing it on the counter with extra care. ‘I don’t really know,’ he said. ‘It’s just a feeling. I don’t think he’s actually lying and I really do think he’s cut up about Rupert dying and he’s genuinely afraid that it was foul play …’

  ‘But?’

  ‘But. Big but …’ Patrick paused as though thinking it through.

  He was good at reading people, Naomi thought. He wasn’t so good at taking notice of what he read, but there was nothing wrong with his actual perception.

  ‘I don’t think he’s saying everything. I think he knows … knew about those men before Rupert died and that’s really what made him suspicious, what scared him. And I think he’s very scared, Naomi. I think he’s trying very hard to hide it but I think if he thought he could get away with it he’d have skipped the country well before now.’

  ‘Skipped the country?’ She was amused by his choice of phrase. Then more seriously she asked, ‘So, what’s stopping him, I wonder?’

  ‘You agree with me?’ He sounded surprised.

  ‘I think I do. Question is, why he is hiding what he knows.’

  ‘He’s more scared of them than he is of you.’

  ‘Fair enough. Except he’s never encountered Alec, not when he’s got the bit between his teeth. Next question is, did he get Rupert involved with them or was Rupert the link?’

  ‘Rupert,’ Patrick said with confidence. ‘Bet you a fiver.’

  She nodded. Much as she disliked the thought of damaging Alec’s rosy memories of his uncle, she felt pretty sure that Patrick was right.

  The day passed slowly and inconclusively. It would have helped, Patrick observed,
if they had any idea what they were looking for.

  By the time Marcus had left it was after four. SOCO had been and gone, their promptness leading Alec to comment that either Reg Fine had pulled a lot of strings or that this must be an amazingly crime-free county. Patrick and Naomi had joined the search, Patrick describing what he found, Naomi telling him whether to return it to where he’d found it, or to keep it to add to the growing stack of documents and notebooks Alec had gathered on the kitchen table.

  Harry and Naomi cooked while Alec and Patrick sorted through what they had recovered.

  ‘Diaries,’ Patrick said. ‘Going back to 1983. I don’t think he threw anything away. A couple of old address books from the study and the one from by the telephone in the hall.’

  ‘More notes for his book,’ Alec went on. ‘More names to add to the list of interviewees. Plans for volume two of his Fen Tigers thing. Bank statements, credit card statements, usual stuff. It’s going to take weeks to check up on all this.’

  ‘Then we prioritize,’ Naomi said. ‘Look for unusual transactions on the statements or anything regular that isn’t a utility or named. Cash withdrawals, that sort of thing.’

  ‘I’ll do that,’ Patrick volunteered.

  ‘Feel free,’ Alec told him. ‘I’ll go through the phone bills and cross-reference with the address books. Harry, could you give Patrick a hand after dinner? There’s miles of the financial stuff and an accountant’s eye …’

  ‘Be glad to. You didn’t say, was there anything of interest on the computer disks?’

  ‘Of interest, yes. Relevance, not that I could see. The stick drive had a back-up of his book. It looked to be about ninety percent complete.’

  ‘How can you tell?’ Naomi wondered. ‘Harry, how do you want your steak?’ She prodded it with a finger. ‘It feels medium rare.’

  ‘How do you work that out without seeing it?’ Harry wanted to know.

  ‘Oh, there was this chef on television. He said if you pressed the base of your thumb then what that felt like, when you prodded steak, was medium. The ball of your thumb felt like well done.’

  ‘Presumably if it felt like the knuckle it meant you’d burned it,’ Alec mocked. ‘You must have asbestos fingers. I’d like to find that laptop. And, as to how I know the book was ninety percent done, he’s already got a table of contents. Twenty-five chapters and most already written.’