Dark Waters

by Mary-Jane Riley

  ‘So, could Middlemarch have been Mickey, and he was taking his revenge?’

  Alex shook her head. ‘He said he was working for someone else, and I believe him.’

  ‘So, it’s the someone else who is Middlemarch?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Laurie, ‘they’re not connected?’

  ‘Perhaps not. But then again—’

  What was she missing? She picked up her bag. ‘I’m going to go home and dig around a bit. See if I can find anything. In the meantime, you ought to give that stuff to the police.’ She got to the door. ‘One other thing – did your dad ever mention anyone called Stu Eliot?’

  Laurie thought for a minute, her brow furrowed. ‘I don’t think so, no.’

  Alex left.

  40

  It proved surprisingly easy to find out about Derek Daley’s business affairs on the web. She learned that as well as the magazine he had owned and edited, Daley had owned three others. And they were barely keeping afloat, yet Daley hadn’t given up his lavish lifestyle. He was getting cash from somewhere.

  Blackmail money.

  But who was he blackmailing? Who was Middlemarch? And why him – if it was a him – in particular?

  She delved further, thinking about the company that was on the bank statements Laurie had shown her.

  As she had thought, Worldwide Listening was a media group based in Ireland. It was the owner of several Irish local radio stations and had been bought out a few years ago by The Lewes Press Group that included titles such as The World This Week, the Buckinghamshire Times and The Post. Right. So where did that take her? The Lewes Press Group was owned by Bud. But she hadn’t realized quite how much he’d acquired.

  What was she missing? She thought about Heath and how he had taken himself off when he was with the business unit. Perhaps he had been doing some digging and had come across something significant. Had he been trying to tell her something that night he rescued her from Lin? She closed her eyes, remembering his reluctance to talk to her, his tired and worried demeanour. Would he have told her more if she had asked the right questions?

  ‘Hey, Lexi, got time for a bit of decorating?’ Sasha leaned on the doorjamb of Alex’s study.

  Alex rubbed her eyes. She’d had too much of looking at computers lately, but she did want to delve a bit further into Derek Daley’s affairs. And quite possibly those of Bud. ‘Sasha, I’ve—’ She waved a hand at the screen.

  ‘Come on, Lexi, you did say you would, and I’ve sort of screwed up the courage now to clear it out. Gently put away the memories.’

  Alex looked up at her sister and saw the pleading and vulnerability on her face. This was important. Daley could wait.

  At first, taking the old photographs of Sasha’s twins off the wall had been heartbreaking and painful, but Sasha was determined. ‘I want to remember them with love,’ she said, ‘not sadness. ‘I know it was all down to me—’

  ‘You were ill,’ said Alex quietly. ‘You didn’t know what you were doing.’

  Sasha nodded. ‘I know. I’ve learned to accept that. You know, I can’t remember anything about that night, the night they drowned.’

  ‘Sash.’

  ‘No, I want to talk about them. I want to see them in my head again. I’ve spent far too many years thinking I could forget, but I know I can’t and I don’t want to.’

  For the next few hours Alex and Sasha worked side by side, clearing and cleaning the room, while talking about her children and reliving some of the happy memories.

  ‘We’ll get some new frames and put the best pictures of the twins in them, Sasha. Happy pictures. And one or two of you with them.’

  ‘I’d like that.’

  ‘Look,’ said Alex, pulling a box from behind one of Sasha’s old chairs, ‘here are some of your books.’

  Sasha opened up the flaps and peered inside. ‘Ha. These are from one of my self-improvement phases, you know, reading some of the classics. Trying to gloss over the fact I did nothing with my life.’ She pulled one out. ‘The Call of the Wild by Jack London.’

  Alex snatched it from her hand. ‘I wondered where that had got to. Did you steal it from my bookcase?’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Sasha, colouring.

  ‘What else of mine have you got in here?’ Alex began to root through the box.

  ‘Nothing. I don’t think.’ She grinned, pushed her hair out of her eyes.

  ‘Bet you have. Let me see. Hmm. Thérèse Raquin. Nana. Germinal.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I was going through a French phase.’

  ‘War and Peace. Dostoyevsky. Your Russian phase.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Wuthering Heights. Jane Eyre. Middlemarch—’

  ‘My English phase. Did you know that Charlotte Brontë first published under the pen name Currer Bell?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Alex. ‘And George Eliot was really Mary Anne Evans and—’ She stopped. Could that be it? Could that be bloody well it?

  ‘Alex? Are you all right? You’ve gone a funny colour.’

  Alex scrambled up from the floor. ‘I’ll be back later,’ she said. ‘I promise. I’ve got to go and look something up.’

  Her head was buzzing as her fingers flew over the keyboard.

  Bud Evans. Stu Eliot. Mary Anne Evans. George Eliot. Surely it was too far-fetched, and she was putting two and two together and making considerably more than four? But Bud blowing hot and cold over the story about Daley and Fleet’s deaths. Wanting to know what was going on, then demanding she drop the story. His odd treatment of Heath. Then Heath on the business unit and disappearing. Business. Money. Bud.

  Okay. So Bud had begun his career on the Falmouth Packet. Went to the Birmingham Post. Then the Daily Mail. Yes, yes, she knew all that. No family. No siblings, no wife, no children. In interviews he joked he was married to whichever newspaper he was working on. And not just in interviews, at all social occasions too. What had Willem called Stu Eliot? The Barnardo’s Boy, that was it.

  Back to Bud. Joined The Post in the mid-eighties. Climbed to the top, buying the paper from its owners when it was threatened with closure. Turned its fortunes around. Acquired a local weekly. A Midlands radio group. Bought Worldwide Listening in Ireland. Nothing new there.

  But how many people had he trodden on while on the way up? No one – or very few people – get to be as successful as that without rattling more than a few cages.

  But Bud? Really?

  Come on, come on, there must be something, surely. Or maybe she was massively wrong. Think. What about the rumours, the very strong rumours, that there were going to be big changes at The Post, that jobs were threatened, that there was a sale in the offing?

  And then, bingo.

  It was a paragraph in the middle of a dry and dusty business article. The Lewes Press Group was about to be sold to a giant Australian media corporation for a whole load of cash. A life-changing amount of cash. Her eyes could hardly take in the sums of money the article writer was quoting. The sale had been gone over by the media regulators and given a clean bill of health.

  She thought about what someone might do if they thought that sort of money could be taken away from them.

  She thought about what someone might do if they were threatened about a particularly nasty secret from the past.

  She thought about the photograph that seemed to be at the heart of all that had been going on.

  Alex had only ever looked at it on her phone, but now she transferred it to the big screen of her computer. As ever, it made her sad to see the hope on the faces of the students and to think of the tragedy that was to come. It had been a lovely day when it was taken in that pub garden by the river. There were plenty of people in the background, all enjoying the sunshine: families, couples, students.

  She looked closely.

  There was one young man, a student, she guessed, sitting at a picnic bench behind Roger, Derek, Willem, and Jen, staring at them. Malevolence shone out of the photo. She enlarg
ed the picture as far as she could without it becoming grainy.

  She sat back in her chair.

  Bud Evans, also known as Stu Eliot.

  ‘This is all very cloak-and-dagger, Alex,’ said Bud, as he lowered himself onto the bench in Riverside Walk Gardens. He took a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his forehead. ‘Nice day for it, though. Watching the Thames.’ He looked around. ‘Can’t say I’ve ever sat here.’

  ‘Millbank Prison used to stand here. Convicts were deported to Australia from it.’

  ‘Cheerful.’

  Boats travelled with purpose up and down the great river; they didn’t meander like on the Broads. Everything about London was urgent, busy, stifling. She was longing to get back to the wide skies of East Anglia. The gentler pace, the space to breathe. But she had wanted to meet Bud here, out in the open. Somewhere safe.

  ‘Well?’ he asked.

  It was strange to see Bud out of the office. She only ever thought of him behind a desk piled high with papers and barking at hapless members of the editorial team. He had been her friend, her mentor over the years. He had pulled her up when she was at rock bottom. She sipped her coffee. Her stomach was tense. ‘Are you Stu Eliot?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ He spoke evenly, without surprise.

  ‘Were you at Cambridge with my dad? And Roger Fleet, Derek Daley, Jen Tamsett and Willem Major?’

  ‘Alex.’ He sounded pained.

  ‘Were you?’

  Two children began to run up and down the steps near their bench. Their harassed mother called out to them. ‘Alfie, Nicky, come on. Please. Now.’ A woman posed in front of Henry Moore’s Locking Piece while her partner took a photo.

  ‘There’s only you and me here, Bud.’

  ‘I’m a journalist, remember?’

  Alex shrugged. ‘I know. But I want to learn the truth. That’s all. You were there when Zoe died.’

  He blew air out through pursed lips. ‘How did you find out about me?’

  She was right. ‘Middlemarch.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Derek Daley was blackmailing you. Your name was Middlemarch, his was – rather less imaginatively, Double Dee. You were Stu Eliot, then Bud Evans. George Eliot. Mary Anne Evans.’ She felt tired now. ‘Even your company – The Lewes Press Group – is part of the puzzle. Nothing to do with the town, but called after Mary Anne Evans’s lover, George Lewes. A philosopher.’

  ‘Ah. The name was a bit of vanity.’ He pulled his e-cigarette out of his pocket. ‘However. Not as clever as I thought I was.’

  ‘What I don’t understand is that Daley was there the day she died, so he was all part of it too.’

  Bud vaped. ‘Yes. But he could prove I was involved. He took a picture of me wrapping Zoe’s body in my jacket. He was always carrying that damn camera around. And it was only me and Zoe in that picture. There were also other things I did at university that I’m not proud of but that would harm me very badly if they came out. Derek has been a thorn in my side for years. Years. I generally keep out of the limelight, but he saw me somewhere – I don’t know where, a dinner I think. I thought I’d changed enough.’ He shrugged. ‘Obviously I hadn’t.’

  ‘So, he began to blackmail you.’

  ‘Threatened to tell the world who I really was. Yes. At first it was nothing very much; no more than I could handle. “To tide me over”, he’d say. Of course, blackmailers never stop.’

  ‘And then he found out about the sale of The Lewes Press Group.’

  Bud smiled. ‘That sale is going to net me a lot of money. Derek wanted more and more. He got too greedy. And I realized that when I sold the company, there could be a lot of publicity and my cover might be blown. More people might recognize me. If Derek wanted more money, what about Roger Fleet? He might not have wanted the cash, but he might have worried about his soul. And Jen? She could have tried something. You see, I reinvented myself after Cambridge. Buried Stu, and Bud was born. It was easy in those days. Probably wouldn’t be able to do it now. I’d done some work for the student mag – reviews mostly, but I carried on writing when I left and found I loved it, and I was good at it.’ He vaped hard. A helicopter thudded overhead. ‘I became a journalist and clambered up the greasy pole. I did well, Alex. I wasn’t going to have all that taken away. I knew any one of those people who’d been there when Zoe died could blow the whistle on me.’

  ‘But my father couldn’t harm you.’

  ‘I didn’t know that. You never told me your father had dementia.’

  ‘Did you know who I was when you gave me my first job?’

  Bud turned to her and smiled. ‘Of course I did. It amused me to have Tony’s daughter in my debt. Mind you, Tony was one of the good guys. His death I would have been sad about.’

  ‘And what about Willem’s family?’

  ‘Mickey enjoyed the job a little too much sometimes.’

  ‘You wanted me dead too, Bud.’

  ‘I didn’t, not really.’ He sounded almost sad. ‘But then you wouldn’t stop, would you, Alex? I tried to stifle the story and still you carried on.’ For the first time he became angry. ‘Asking questions. Digging. Ferreting around. Like Heath. Always bloody ferreting.’

  ‘That’s what you taught us.’

  Bud laughed, anger having subsided. ‘Touché. But I couldn’t see my life’s work blown to bits. I’d worked really hard to build up my company. I started with nothing. Well, not exactly nothing. Willem’s father gave me a good wedge to keep me quiet about the dirty drugs underworld Willem Major was involved in. But I built The Lewes Press Group from the bottom up. It’s worth a hell of a lot of money now, and I’ve got a buyer. I can finally lead the life I want to, the life I’m entitled to. There’s only you in my way, Alex. But you’ve got no proof, have you?’ Another smile. Smug.

  ‘What secrets might your computer give up?’

  ‘Have you ever heard of the onion router, Alex?’ His voice was bored now. ‘The dark web? You’re not the only one that can use a hacker to help.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘True. Who was Mickey?’

  ‘A man who owed me a favour. You come across all sorts in this game, as you know.’ He vaped some more. ‘There is no line from Mickey to me. I can be outed as Stu Eliot, but I can’t be tied to any of the deaths. The picture of me with Zoe died with Derek. I didn’t kill anybody.’

  ‘Except Zoe.’

  ‘It was an accident.’

  ‘If they find her body—’

  ‘They won’t. No one knows where it’s buried. So no getting DNA to match to mine, even if any has survived.’

  ‘They got DNA from Richard III.’

  Bud stood. ‘They have to find the body first, Alex.’

  He walked away from her towards Tate Britain, then was brought to a stop by a woman and a man. Good old Logan and Berry. At last they’d come in useful. Maybe Bud couldn’t be prosecuted for instigating the murders, but taking him in for questioning and perhaps raking up some dirt on him might mean his business deal would fall through. Logan and Berry would do their best.

  She got up off the bench. The London air smelled of diesel, hamburgers and sweat. Litter churned lazily at her feet. Traffic came at her from all directions, horns blared, sirens screeched, the sun shone through low cloud. People hurried past her, heads down, peering down at phone screens or at the pavement. Her stomach churned. It had been so hard to confront Bud like that. This was the man who had mentored her, shaped her career, who she almost looked upon as a father figure, who’d helped her when she was at rock bottom. Who had betrayed her trust in him. She was unbearably sad.

  It was time to go home now. To Sole Bay and her family.

  As she began to walk towards Vauxhall Bridge, something made her look across the road. A man was standing there. Tall, dark-haired, loose-limbed. Even from a distance she could see a smile on his face. He raised his hand.

  Malone.

  For a moment, time was suspended.

  Then she walked on
.

  41

  One Month Later

  Alex drew the sharp, briny air into her lungs and leaned against the railings separating the prom from the road. It was a beautiful day with not a cloud in the sky. In another month the beach would be crowded with families coming for their holidays, enjoying the sand and the cold North Sea, but now there were only a few couples, some with babies and toddlers.

  ‘Hey.’ Heath’s voice.

  ‘Hey yourself.’ She smiled as he stood beside her. ‘How did you know to find me here?’

  ‘I didn’t. I called at your house and you weren’t there, so I thought I would have a stroll by the beach just in case.’ He tapped his nose. ‘Journalist’s instinct.’

  ‘Of course. I’d think nothing less.’

  ‘You haven’t answered any of my calls. Or texts. For all you knew I could have had a relapse.’

  Alex laughed. ‘I somehow think you would have told me in one of your numerous messages. Anyway, I did answer some of them.’

  ‘A couple, maybe. With one word like “fine”. What does “fine” mean when I ask you how you are?’

  ‘Exactly that.’ Alex turned away and gazed out over the sea again. ‘There’s something about the sea, the way it comes in and goes out. The waves, pulling at the shoreline. It never stops. It’s always there.’

  ‘It’s called the tide.’

  ‘Very amusing. What I mean is, it’s reliable. Whatever else happens, the tide comes in and the tide goes out.’

  ‘Philosophical.’

  ‘I thought Bud would always be there for me. I thought he was one of the good guys.’ She sighed. ‘I can’t get used to calling him Stu. And he was right, you know, what he said to me. The police can’t find any tie-up between him and Mickey.’

  ‘No. But they got him on company fraud, insider trading and other financial stuff, so he will go away for a long time.’

  ‘Not long enough.’

  ‘No, but it’s better than nothing.’

  Alex sighed. ‘You never told me why you came back to Sole Bay that night, when you rescued me from my intruder – from Lin?’