by Henry Porter
And in this case, thought Kate, it had produced neither agony nor aggression but the straightforward cordiality of a country solicitor.
‘And the exit wound?’ asked one policeman. ‘We didn’t see any signs of it.’
‘That was because the bullet exited beneath the bandage at the back of the victim’s head. It simply lifted one corner of the dressing and continued on its way. The dressing fell back and covered the wound when the body dropped forward.’
A team of three detectives arrived and began to work out the geometry of the attack. The position and angle of the car and the line indicated by the exit and entry wounds and the final position of the bullet led them to believe that the killer had lain in wait about twenty paces below where the car came to rest. A large area was cordoned off so that a minute search could be conducted at first light. Then the site was cleared of people.
Just past nine, Kate drove the Bristol back down the track with a police officer in the passenger seat and Nock in the back. She was now sure that Eyam had been assassinated in Cartagena. The bomb must have been intended for him. He had known the risks, which was why he had planned his funeral, prepared a will and had taken steps to leave her the dossier. But why go to Colombia, where it would be a simple task for his enemies to disguise his murder? From what Swift had said, there was good reason to believe he’d left the country using a false passport, but then he checked into the hotel using his own name with a credit card in his own name, thus giving anyone looking for him an exact location. It didn’t add up, but more than that this was not the kind of mistake the patient and calculating Eyam would make.
Russell presented a different problem to the killers. There was no time to fake an accident, or disguise his murder any other way. He had to be eliminated immediately because he was the one person who knew what was in Eyam’s dossier, and they could not allow him to remain alive with that knowledge. The only conclusion to draw was that her last-minute decision to stay at Dove Cottage had saved her life. If she’d left with him, she would certainly have been killed too. She must accept that she was already a target, or would become one the moment they thought she knew the contents of that dossier.
Nock was questioned in the back of a police van parked in the drive, while she made an exhaustive statement to a detective inspector named Jim Newsome. She gave an exact account of her day from the moment Hugh Russell picked her up at the hotel to the discovery of the Audi by Nock. They went back over the funeral and her first meeting with Russell in the cafe. She kept as close to the truth as possible, but there was much she had to omit – her presence in Russell offices, all mention of the documents and of course the child porn she’d found on Eyam’s computer. She filled out the day with plenty of detail about exploring the house, her walk and her calls to New York. Newsome nodded a lot and took down notes. He was polite, but she knew that any experienced investigator would sense the omissions soon enough, and Newsome had a hard, proficient air about him. He asked her a lot of questions about her decision to stay overnight at the cottage and let Russell drive back to town when clearly he should not have been at the wheel of a car. She answered that Russell had begged her to give the place a chance before putting it on the market and indeed during the afternoon she had begun to understand what Eyam had seen in Dove Cottage. It was very peaceful, she said.
‘Peaceful but unlucky,’ observed Newsome dryly. ‘After all, the place has been associated with two violent deaths in as many months. We must at least consider the possibility of a connection. Can you think of any reason why both men were killed?’
‘I don’t see how there can be a connection,’ she said.
‘But if there is it would put you in the line of fire, wouldn’t it? Because you are the common denominator.’
‘Not in any real sense: Mr Russell was David Eyam’s lawyer for a long time before I came on the scene.’
‘But you knew them both, particularly Mr Eyam.’
‘Yes, he was my closest . . . my oldest friend. We hadn’t seen much of each other over the last two years.’
Newsome pondered this. ‘And yet he leaves this place to you. Did you know he was going to do that?’
‘No.’
‘I hope you don’t mind me saying, Miss Lockhart, but it seems odd that a relatively young man should make a will and leave everything to someone he hadn’t seen for two years and not even tell her about it.’
‘Mr Russell told me that David had been ill. Believe me, I was very surprised, and before you go there, I am pretty well off in my own right and have no need of Mr Eyam’s money. To tell you the truth I find it an embarrassment.’
‘You’re very fortunate. These days there are few people who can say that. How much money is involved?’
‘I’m not sure, but you can consult Mr Russell’s partner Paul Spring. He will be in charge of the probate.’
‘We will, Miss Lockhart, be assured of that.’ He paused. ‘Still, you’d expect Mr Eyam to tell you about his plans in the event of his death.’
‘Why are you asking me about Mr Eyam? Aren’t you interested in Hugh Russell? He was just here, in this room like you. And now he’s dead – murdered. Why the hell are you talking about Eyam?’
‘Why was it you left your job in New York so suddenly?’
‘The pressure had been intense: I needed a break.’
‘So it was a coincidence that you were here when you received the news about his death. Forgive me, Miss Lockhart; it all seems a bit convenient.’
She opened her hands. ‘Look, I know what you’re saying. You wonder if I somehow engineered Mr Russell’s death, maybe also Mr Eyam’s death, so that I could inherit this place. Let me just say I have no need of any of it. Look me up on the web and make your own deductions.’
‘I will,’ he said, looking down at his notebook. ‘Do you mind telling me how much you earned last year?’
‘Actually, yes.’
‘Give me an idea. Over a million dollars?’
‘It varies. Last year less than that.’
Newsome straightened. ‘You must be very good at your job.’
She didn’t reply.
‘So, in effect this house is now yours, Miss Lockhart.’
‘In theory,’ she replied, ‘though I don’t know when I officially take possession.’
‘Have you a copy of the will?’
‘I thought I was here to answer questions about Hugh Russell’s death, not my private affairs.’
‘I’m just asking to see the papers he gave you before his death. You’re a lawyer; you understand that the will is all part of the context of this murder.’
‘If you want a copy of the will, you should apply to Russell, Spring & Co. His partner Paul Spring will happily expedite the request, I’m sure.’
‘I will. So, you’re going to sell up?’
‘Yes, as soon as it is mine to do so. I couldn’t live here with all the associations you mentioned. Anyway, it is impractical – I don’t have the time to visit, let alone to deal with all the maintenance.’
‘But you have Mr Nock for that.’
‘Mr Nock was employed by David Eyam, then in his absence by Mr Russell. It’s not my arrangement.’
‘And you say you’ve never met him before today?’
‘No, the first I knew of Mr Nock was when Hugh mentioned his name. I met him this morning when he dropped in.’
‘Dropped in . . .’ said Newsome.
‘I think Hugh called him to tell him I was here, that’s all.’
After an hour and a half, Newsome closed his notebook. ‘We’ve got all we need tonight, Miss Lockhart, but we will want to talk to you at the station as the investigation develops.’ He handed her his card. ‘And call me if you think of anything that might be relevant to the case. Inform me or anyone at the station if you’re going anywhere.’ She rose with him. ‘There will be a patrol car at the end of the drive guarding the crime scene. So, if you have any worries you know that officers will be at hand.’
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br /> When they left Nock came in and asked if she’d like him to spend the night downstairs. She poured them each a glass of Eyam’s whisky and said she would be fine on her own, although some part of her could have done with his company: he reminded her of Cas, a record producer she’d had a brief fling with in New York, and, well, Nock was attractive.
He showed her the heating thermostat in the utility room and flipped the hot water switch. ‘It gets pretty cold up here at night, even in the summer,’ he said, ‘and the beauty of this system is that it’s nearly all your own power. You’ve got a shed load of batteries out back.’
They found themselves in the sitting room. She looked down at the computer. ‘I guess you came to know David fairly well,’ she said.
‘Yep, we got on great. I miss him. I really liked the guy.’
‘But he was having problems with the authorities.’
‘Is that what you call it?’ said Nock bitterly.
She drank the whisky. ‘What happened in England, Sean?’
‘No one was paying attention. Nobody gives a damn any longer.’ He shifted and looked embarrassed and she wondered why.
‘Did you know Eyam was under surveillance?’
He shook his big Viking head, passed a hand over the stubble on his chin, and looked away. ‘I guess so. I came across stuff – sensors in the woods and that kind of thing – before he died. I think they were trying to monitor his movements to the cottage, especially visitors who drove here. There was a lot of activity after he died.’
‘You think this place was bugged?’
‘Maybe. There were some men here after his death. I think they had come to remove everything. I told Mr Russell about them.’
She looked around the room. The place could still be wired, in which case her conversation with Russell in the kitchen might have been overheard, and that might explain why he had been killed when he left.
‘Let’s go outside anyway,’ she said quietly.
She lit a cigarette in the damp air and gave one to Nock, who inhaled and held his breath as though it was cannabis. ‘And the computer?’ she asked. ‘Were they monitoring that?’
His eyes narrowed. ‘Look, I don’t know how much to say to you. It’s difficult.’ He looked away and his leg fidgeted.
‘Sean, this is important – I believe the people who were watching David killed Hugh Russell because of what he knew. Do you understand what I am saying? Now, again, do you think they monitored or otherwise tampered with the computer?’
‘Could be.’
‘Did you know that someone put some illegal material on it? Kiddy porn I think is the right expression. They wanted to incriminate him and send him to jail, Sean.’
‘You should destroy that,’ he said, letting a stream of smoke into the cold night air. ‘Can’t be right to have that kind of thing in the house,’ he added vehemently.
They went inside. Nock unscrewed the back, located the hard drive and extracted it with the help of a short curved crowbar and a hammer from Eyam’s toolbox. The casing popped out and flew across the carpet to the other side of the room. He picked it up and gazed down at it with an odd intensity. ‘Shall I do it?’ he said, taking it to the flagstones by the door. She nodded and he dropped it onto the floor and hit it until there was nothing but a little pile of plastic and metal parts. He swept the remains into his pocket and said he would dispose of them on the walk home. Then he picked up his jacket and went to the door where he looked down at her, and believing he saw something in her eye, took her in his arms without permission or seemingly any doubt that this was the right thing to do. He was gentle and Kate felt something stir in her, but there was no question that she was going to respond.
‘You’ll be blaming yourself for Mr Russell’s death,’ he said as he let go. ‘Don’t. This isn’t your fault. Know that, Kate. There are some real bastards out there and they will stop at nothing. Believe me, I know.’
‘How?’ she said, now much more interested in his tone than the rather awkward pass he’d made.
‘That’s for another time. I’ll see you tomorrow. You’ve got my mobile number if there’s any trouble.’
There was no trouble except in her dreams of the car in the ditch and Russell’s body floating out of the window on a tide of filth and oil. She woke at first light and opened the curtains. At the bottom of the valley a ribbon of mist followed exactly the line of the stream down to the farm. The moon hung low on the far side of the valley. One or two birds had begun to sing and owls still called to each other across the valley. At the end of the garden a deer drank from the small pond, raising its head at regular intervals to the sounds in the woods.
She reached for her phone from the bedside table and sent the word ‘today’ in a text message to Darsh Darshan, then slipped from the bed and went to run the shower. After a few minutes the water was still cold. Cursing, she stumbled downstairs to the utility room in her T-shirt. Next to the switch where Nock had turned on the system the night before was a pair of manual timers in a box with a plastic window. Both the heating and hot water timers were set to come on between midnight and two in the morning. ‘Who the hell needs hot water at that hour?’ she muttered out loud. She tugged the window open and reset both to the right time – seven a.m. – then she shifted the buttons on the hot water timer so the immersion heater clicked into life. A steady hum ensued. It was at this point that she noticed that the action of turning the timers had caused something to drop from behind the wooden board on which they were mounted. She slipped a hand under the two clocks and drew out a cassette tape. In that instant she realised the timers were almost directly in line with the empty bottle of wine and the packets of cheese straws, and dog biscuits. Then she remembered the awkward phrase in his letter: ‘You will find it all behind the times.’ Eyam had set the clocks to the wrong time so that anyone needing hot water would release the tape. That person was likely to be her. Not bad, she thought, looking at the recordings of Handel’s Sarabande and The Messiah, sung by New College Choir. Not bad at all.
She turned it over and read the typed label stuck to the back. ‘Press “Play” and “Forward” simultaneously.’ She went into the kitchen, put on the kettle and began searching the cottage for a tape player. Then an idea came to her.
12
Red Admiral
Roughly twenty-five miles to the south of Dove Cottage, Peter Kilmartin sat in the old coach house and stables that he had recently converted to a magnificent study, looking out on the pewter forms materialising in his garden with the first grey washes of light. A lifelong early riser, he used these quiet hours to relish the freedom to potter about his garden and to browse in his library, the design of which had been in his head through his last four jobs in SIS.
Above the low schoolmaster’s armchair were two quotations pinned to a green baize noticeboard. The first was a Chinese poem written some five thousand years before: ‘When the sun rises, I go to work; when the sun goes down I take my rest; I dig the well from where I drink; I farm the soil that yields my food; I share creation; Kings can do no more.’ The second was from a long letter by Thomas Jefferson, a hero of Kilmartin’s, chiefly because of the ingenuity Jefferson showed in organising his retirement at Monticello. ‘I talk of plows and harrows, of seeding and harvesting with my neighbours, and of politics too, if they choose, with as little reserve as the rest of my fellow citizens, and feel at length, the blessing of being free to say and do what I please without being responsible to any mortal.’
Kilmartin tore himself from the pleasure of watching the light bring his garden to life like a theatre set, to consider the first draft of a book review, but then the screen of his mobile lit up and the phone began to vibrate. He peered at it. No number was displayed, then he answered to Murray Link’s voice.
‘You’re up early,’ said Link. ‘I thought I’d be leaving you a message. I have just finished looking at the material you gave me.’
‘Yes, and what did you find?’
‘Let’s just say there’s a lot wrong with it.’
‘In what way?’
‘Looks like two sections were written to the camcorder at different times, which is at odds with the date and time information you see when playing it. You’ve got to see it for yourself. I’ve done a full analysis that I want to show you.’
‘Can you be more specific now?’
‘One thing I can tell you is that the first section, the part that wasn’t shown in court, was completely wrong. According to the dateline it was recorded just before the main section, but there’s a lot of internal evidence – a clock on the bell tower, for instance, and the angle of the sun, to say that it was morning, not evening. It is pretty obvious stuff. And in the main section there are many weird jumps and pauses, which make me think the whole thing smells. Some of it has been expertly done. The rest is amateur city. It doesn’t make sense.’
‘Where and when can I see it?’
‘Anytime; anywhere. I’ll bring a laptop.’
‘Someone will call you. Don’t use this phone again.’
Sensing Kilmartin was about to ring off, Link said hurriedly, ‘And there’s the other thing you asked me about.’
Kilmartin coughed. ‘I think that must be for another time,’ he said quickly.
‘Yeah, OK.’
Kilmartin hung up and sat back in the chair, with the tips of his fingers pressed together. If the film was a fake, only one of two people could be responsible, each with wildly different motives. If the solution he favoured turned out to be right, it seemed impossible that the Andrew Fortunes and Christine Shoemakers of the world were not onto it as well: if he had his doubts they would too. But then ten minutes later something changed his mind. He had crossed the cobbled yard to the house. His sister Helen was up and had just made a cup of tea. She turned on the radio to hear the news headlines at seven thirty a.m. The second item on what appeared to be a fairly slow news day concerned the murder of a local solicitor at the home of the former senior civil servant who himself had died by violent means in Colombia. Two people were questioned overnight by detectives but weren’t detained. Police sources suggested that the victim had been shot by a high-powered sniper rifle as he left the property in his car.