The photographic session over, the party dispersed, some to their rooms, others to tea in the lounge. Harry took himself off for a walk around the grounds, transformed from the wilderness Stronach had presided over into artfully landscaped lawns, hedges, shrubberies and rockeries, with a winding path beyond tracing a circular route through the surrounding woodland, which Harry followed for a quarter of an hour or so.
Returning via the extensive kitchen gardens, he heard the clink of mallet on ball from the croquet lawn as he was climbing the steps leading to it. At the top, he saw, to his surprise, Dr Starkie lining up a shot – and looking fit enough while he was about it – with Erica Rawson watching from the sidelines, leaning on her mallet. A less likely pair of croquet players he would have been hard pressed to imagine.
Erica saw him a second before Starkie, who was stooped in concentration over the ball, talking as he squinted towards the targeted hoop. ‘We should beware of connecting events simply because they coincide,’ he said. ‘It’s a classic—’
‘Harry!’ Erica shouted, cutting the doctor short.
‘Barnett,’ said Starkie in muted surprise, unravelling himself stiffly from his stoop.
‘Hi,’ said Harry. ‘Who’s winning?’
‘No clear leader so far.’
‘He is,’ said Erica, with a rueful smile. ‘It’s just that one of his tactics is not to admit it.’
‘Aye, well, I have to try everything to compensate for the age gap.’ Starkie ventured a rare smile of his own.
‘I should have thought this was one sport where age wasn’t much of a factor,’ said Harry.
‘It’s always a factor,’ Starkie responded. ‘Surely you’ve—’
‘Erica!’ The voice slicing through their conversation was Dangerfield’s. They looked up to see him hurrying along the flagstoned path from the castle towards them, his face clouded with concern.
‘What’s the matter?’ Erica called.
‘Is there any chance you could drive me into Aberdeen in your car? I honestly don’t feel up to taking the minibus.’ He arrived breathlessly at the edge of the lawn. ‘It’s … an emergency.’
‘What’s happened?’ asked Harry.
‘What? Oh, Harry. I didn’t … see you there.’ Dangerfield wiped some sweat from his brow. ‘Sorry. I ought to … It’s … bad news. There’s been an accident. Magister’s in Aberdeen Royal Infirmary. They’ve just phoned. I, er, think I ought to go and see him. The thing is, er …’
‘What about Jabber?’
Dangerfield did not answer. His mouth shaped words he seemed unable to speak. His gaze met Harry’s grimly across the lawn. Then, slowly and decisively, he shook his head.
Chapter Fourteen
DANGERFIELD TOLD HARRY and Erica the little he knew as soon as they had started for Aberdeen. Wiseman’s car had run off the B road somewhere between Aboyne and Ballater around midday and had plunged into the river Dee. Wiseman had scrambled free, but Lloyd had been trapped inside, unconscious, and had drowned.
‘It sounds like that stretch I showed you yesterday, Harry, where I sometimes fish. The road runs right along the riverbank. If you lost control travelling in either direction, you could easily end up in the river. There’s simply nothing to stop you. You’d have to be gunning it, though.’
‘I don’t see Magister as a careful driver,’ said Harry.
‘No. Neither do I.’
‘And which direction was he travelling in?’ asked Erica.
‘They didn’t say. We can ask him. He’s not in bad shape, apparently. Basically just cuts and bruises. But shaken up, of course. And shocked. He was too confused at first to get a message to us.’ Dangerfield rubbed his eyes. ‘What a bloody awful thing to happen.’
‘At least this time we can be sure it was an accident,’ said Harry. But, even as he said it, he realized they could not be sure. Of that or anything else.
* * *
At the Royal Infirmary, Erica suggested she wait in the car, reasoning that three visitors – one of them a woman he hardly knew – might be too much of a strain for Wiseman. So Harry and Dangerfield went in without her, following the signs through a warren of stairways and corridors to the ward where he was being kept under observation.
‘The doctor thinks there may have been some concussion,’ the sister explained, ‘so we’re keeping a careful eye on him. It’d be best if you didn’t go straight in. The police are with him.’
There was a small seating area halfway back along the corridor leading to the ward. There Harry and Dangerfield perched on plastic chairs and toyed listlessly with dog-eared magazines while the late afternoon ticked slowly by.
It had not in fact ticked very far when an unpleasant surprise materialized in the form of Inspector Geddes. Harry had assumed the sister meant a local constable was noting down Wiseman’s recollections of the crash. Instead, here was Geddes, all the way from Dundee, this time sans Sergeant Crawford.
‘Mr Barnett and Mr Dangerfield. That’s handy.’
‘We’ve come to see how our friend’s doing, Inspector,’ said Dangerfield levelly.
‘Not so bad, considering. Why don’t you go on in and see for yourself, Mr Dangerfield? I’d like a wee word with Mr Barnett in private, if that’s all right with him.’
‘Fine,’ said Harry, as casually as he could manage. ‘Send Magister my best wishes, Danger.’
‘Will do.’ Dangerfield headed for the ward. He cast Harry a cautioning, sympathetic glance over Geddes’s shoulder as he went.
‘There’s a room down here the sister said we could use,’ said Geddes, leading the way along the corridor.
It occurred to Harry that he and Dangerfield had not given their names to the sister, so there was no way Geddes could have known he would have the opportunity of a ‘private word’. Yet he had already arranged a venue for it. He must have been more or less certain Harry would be one of Wiseman’s visitors, though in reality that had been largely a matter of chance. Vindicating the inspector’s guesswork was a good way to attract suspicion, however – whether inadvertently or not.
The room was small and cheerlessly furnished, with a window looking out onto a loading bay. This, Harry surmised, might be where relatives of a patient were brought to receive bad news. And bad news, he already felt certain, was coming his way.
‘I’m liaising with the Grampian force on this, Mr Barnett,’ Geddes began. ‘In view of the obvious connection with Mr Askew’s death, they’re happy for me to take an interest in what happened today.’
‘Is there an obvious connection, Inspector?’
‘It’s obvious to me. How much do you know about the crash?’
‘Not much. We were hoping Magister – Mr Wiseman – could tell us more.’
‘Aye, well, he’s told me as much as he seems able to, so I’ll sum it up for you. Apparently, he left his fountain pen at the hotel bar in Braemar you all visited yesterday. The Fife Arms. Remember it?’
‘Yes. That is, I couldn’t swear to the name, but—’
‘He phoned them this morning. They said they’d found the pen. So, he decided to drive over there in his hire car. He met Mr Lloyd on his way out and invited him along, Mr Lloyd having missed the trip yesterday. They got to Braemar, collected the pen and started back. He took the B road from Ballater to Aboyne, on the southern side of the Dee. He began to notice some play in the steering. Nothing too serious at first. Then it got worse. He should have stopped. He should certainly have slowed down. But he wanted to catch up with the rest of you, so … he didn’t slow down. Just where the road runs close to the river, as he was approaching a bend, the steering failed completely. They went straight into the river. At some speed. Mr Lloyd wasn’t wearing his seatbelt. He probably knocked himself out on the windscreen when they hit the water. Plus the car keeled over onto his side in the current. Mr Wiseman got out. He’s not exactly sure how. He reached the bank and flagged down the next car. The driver helped him pull Mr Lloyd out, but it took a lot of doing. And b
y then it was too late.’
‘Terrible,’ Harry murmured.
‘You said it. Especially for Mr Lloyd. He had a wife and grown-up children, I’m told. There’ll be a lot of grief going around.’
‘So there will.’
‘Your reunion’s beginning to look jinxed, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. It is.’
‘But I don’t believe in jinxes, Mr Barnett.’
‘No?’
‘Absolutely not. Our pathologist couldn’t establish whether some of Mr Askew’s head injuries were inflicted before he fell out of the train. But he couldn’t rule out the possibility either. It’d be as easy to shove an unconscious man through an HST window as for a conscious man to crawl through, don’t you reckon?’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘Well, I’m sure. And that’s what matters. It’s only a theory. I grant you that. But if we find evidence that the steering on Mr Wiseman’s car was tampered with, it’ll turn into a betting certainty.’
‘Really?’
‘Take my word for it. Now, whoever sabotaged the car was obviously out to get Mr Wiseman. They couldn’t have known Mr Lloyd would be along for the ride. And they got lucky in a sense, with Mr Wiseman taking that riverside route and the Dee being in spate after all the rain we’ve had. Of course, they also got unlucky, because he survived. Maybe they were just chancing their arm. Making use of their … expertise … and seeing what might happen. You see the variables in all this, don’t you?’
‘Yes. I suppose so. But why—’
‘Why? I don’t know, Mr Barnett. Why should one of you old airmen – if that’s who the culprit is – take it into his head to start murdering people he hasn’t seen for fifty years? It’s a good question. But it assumes you haven’t seen each other for fifty years. And that isn’t strictly true, is it? You and the absent Mr Chipchase, for instance. Close friends and business partners throughout that period, I gather.’
‘You gather wrong.’
‘Do I?’
‘I haven’t seen Barry in ten years. And our business association ended more than thirty years ago.’
‘What kind of business was that?’
‘A garage. Car sales and repairs.’
‘Repairs? So, you know all about … steering mechanisms, for example.’
‘Since you ask, no. I don’t know anything about them.’
‘Perhaps Mr Chipchase handled that side of things.’
‘As a matter of fact, he did.’
‘But he’s attending his sister’s funeral in Manchester, so we can rule him out. Or can we? Where exactly did his sister live, Mr Barnett?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘But he did have a sister?’
‘I … don’t know.’
‘You’re going to tell me you don’t know anything about Chipchase Sheltered Holdings Ltd as well, aren’t you?’
‘It’s true. I don’t.’
‘A nasty little scam. Investors thought they were buying into a chain of exclusive nursing homes, with guaranteed rights to see out their days in one free of charge if they needed to. But it was Mr Chipchase’s old age they were subsidizing, not their own. It looks like he suckered Mr Askew into investing. Maybe other old RAF chums as well. Maybe some of them were hoping to settle a score with him this weekend. Him and his … partner.’
‘Ex-partner.’
‘Aye. Of course. Ex.’ Geddes moved his face closer to Harry’s. The suspicion that the inspector had been eating pickled onions earlier in the day became a stomach-turning certainty. But Harry’s stomach was turning for other reasons as well. ‘A lot of the money was never recovered. Salted away with a trusted friend for safekeeping while Chipchase served his all too brief prison sentence. That’d be my bet.’
‘Barry went to prison?’
‘You didn’t know that either, of course.’
‘No. I didn’t.’
‘Eighteen months. He got out last autumn.’
‘I had no idea.’
‘Just like you had no idea Mr Wiseman and Mr Askew were investors in Chipchase Sheltered Holdings.’
‘Magister’s confirmed that?’
‘He was too embarrassed to admit being taken for a ride when Mr Lloyd handed round the notice I gave him. But a dip in the Dee’s cured him of that. Yes, he’s confirmed it. How many others are there, Mr Barnett? You may as well tell me.’
‘I don’t know. I had nothing to do with it. I don’t even live in this country any more. I was thousands of miles away when Barry was setting up his nursing home fraud. He’d have known better than try to involve me, anyway.’
‘So you say.’
‘It happens to be true.’
‘Looking forward to flying home to … Vancouver, is it?’
‘It is. And, yes, I am.’
‘Pity. I’m going to have to ask you to put that on hold.’
‘What?’
‘In fact, I’d like you to stay in the Aberdeen area, at least for a few days. Until we can draw all the forensics together and see where they lead. Perhaps Mr Dangerfield could put you up. I gather he has a guestroom going begging.’
Harry took a long, deep breath. ‘Is that really necessary, Inspector?’
‘It’s purely precautionary, Mr Barnett.’ Geddes smiled. ‘But I find precautions are very necessary in my line of work.’
Chapter Fifteen
HARRY NEVER GOT the chance to ask Dangerfield if he would be prepared to put him up. Geddes did the asking for him, before leaving the hospital. In the circumstances, Dangerfield had little choice but to agree. He was also obliged to pass on a message from Wiseman to the effect that he was too tired to see anyone else. Harry found himself turned away by one fellow Clean Sheeter and foisted on another. For this last he could only apologize, which he attempted to do as he and Dangerfield stood outside the main entrance to the hospital, watching Geddes hurry away towards his car.
‘The bloody man’s got it into his head that Barry and I are involved in some sort of murderous conspiracy. I’m sorry you’ve ended up with me as a house guest because of it, Danger. But it won’t be for long. I’m sure of that. Once they establish the car crash really was an accident, he’ll have to drop it.’
‘What if they establish it wasn’t an accident, Harry?’
‘You surely don’t believe Magister’s car was sabotaged.’
‘Magister believes it.’
‘What? And that I was responsible?’
‘He didn’t come out and say so. But when I told him you were waiting to see him, he pleaded with me to stop you going in. He seemed … frightened.’
‘Frightened? Of me?’
‘I know. It’s crazy. But what with Jabber dying in front of him and Geddes banging on about Chipchase Sheltered Holdings …’
‘You didn’t invest in that, did you, Danger?’
‘No. I’d never heard of it before yesterday. Besides, Barry’s been staying with me. Do you think I’d have put him up if I’d been one of the punters he ripped off?’
‘Point taken.’
‘Personally, I don’t think either of you has what it takes to kill anyone.’
‘Thank God for that.’
‘Unfortunately for you, my opinion doesn’t count for much.’
‘Perhaps I should go back in and try to make Magister understand how—’
‘Leave it for now, Harry. He’ll probably be thinking more rationally after a night’s sleep. We probably all will.’
They agreed to say nothing to the others about Harry’s status as a suspect, at least for the moment. The atmosphere at Kilveen Castle for the rest of their stay promised to be strained enough without that information being added to the mix. It meant Erica had to be kept in the dark as well, which obliged both men to guard their tongues during the drive back. But when she suggested diverting to see the site of the crash, Harry did not object. He welcomed a postponement of their arrival at the castle – and the torrent of unanswerable questions it would set in motion
. He was also curious to see the stretch of river where his alleged plot against Wiseman was supposed to have reached its climax – and where poor old Jabber had stopped jabbering for all time.
* * *
Blue and white police tape fastened to stakes marked out a cordon round a set of wheel ruts cutting across the narrow grass verge between the road and the riverbank. It was the only sign of the earlier accident. Otherwise all was much as it had been during the brief stop Dangerfield had made there during his minibus tour the previous day. The Dee was a cold, grey, speeding mass of water, with dull green fields on its other side and dark, whale-backed mountains forming the western horizon. The road hugged the line of the river, hemmed in by a wooded hillside. There was a fishermen’s hut tucked away under the trees and a pull-in for cars, where they stopped and gazed at the empty scene in silence for a minute or more before climbing out.
‘You’d never know, would you?’ murmured Dangerfield.
‘It looks so … peaceful,’ said Erica. ‘I can understand why you fish here.’
‘I don’t think I ever will again.’
‘That’s a pity.’
‘It’s all a—’ Dangerfield was interrupted by the trill of his mobile. He yanked it out of his pocket and answered. ‘Hello? … Oh … Yes, hello.’ Then he waved an apology to Harry and Erica and walked away out of earshot.
‘Is it my imagination, Harry, or does Johnny hold himself in some irrational way responsible for everything that’s gone wrong this weekend?’
‘I guess that’s inevitable. The reunion was his idea, after all. But none of this is his fault.’
‘He’ll be left to cope with the aftermath, though, won’t he, when you all go your separate ways tomorrow.’
‘Actually, I’m not leaving the area. Not tomorrow, anyway. Danger’s putting me up for a few days.’
‘Good. That’ll be a help. It was kind of you to suggest it.’
‘I didn’t. It was Inspector Geddes’s idea.’
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