“Nathan Hawk.”
“One moment, Nathan Hawk.”
I could only imagine the conversation between her and her boss across the office, the look of surprise on his face, but twenty seconds later a male voice said, “Hallo, Mr Hawk.”
“Yukito? I’m Fiona’s father...”
“I thought you would be. How is she?”
“She’s fine. I was wondering if you’d, well ... you’ll think I’m interfering, but really that isn’t my intention...”
“Nothing is wrong, I hope?”
“No. Well, yes.” If he wasn’t confused before, he certainly was now. “I think you should come over and see her.”
“Would she like that?” he asked, eagerly.
“Oh, yes.”
“Can I speak to her?”
“No, she isn’t here. She doesn’t know I’m calling you.”
“I understand. May I have your e-mail address, Mr Hawk? I will let you know when I will arrive. It will be soon.”
“Good.”
I gave him my e-mail and we said goodbye. It was the most constructive thing I’d done all week. I closed everything down, locked the cabin and turned in.
- 19 -
When I woke the next morning I instantly recalled the previous day and the fact that Blackwell was due at ten o’clock. Laura surfaced and asked what time it was. Seven thirty, she answered herself. She pointed downwards, in the general direction of the kitchen, and said, croakily, “Everybody’s late.”
“No surgery?”
She shook her head.
I climbed out of bed and put on a dressing gown. “Shall I make tea? Bring it back?”
Again she shook her head as if the very idea of tea in bed appalled her. I went downstairs, switching on lights as I went. I was first into the kitchen. There was no telly on, no coffee made, the dishwasher was still closed. Even Dogge was still asleep under the table. She stretched and came over to greet me.
That’s when it began, I suppose, the slow realisation that a catastrophe was in the making. The place was usually buzzing by seven. It was half past. Seven thirty-four, to be exact. I went back up the stairs, met Laura on the landing and she picked up my rising concern, asked what was wrong. I waved her aside, went on up to Grogan and Kinsella’s attic room. I opened the door and stared into the sweaty gloom. I remember closing my eyes, as if when I opened them again the picture would be different. Fat chance. Grogan was there; Kinsella wasn’t. He’d gone.
I went over to Grogan, gripped him by the shoulder and rocked him where he lay on the futon. He stirred but didn’t wake up. He was alive but ... what?
I hurried back down the stairs, saying to Laura as I passed her, “Kinsella’s gone. Go see that Grogan’s okay.”
“Why, what’s....”
“Just do it!”
She turned and went upstairs. I hurried back down to the kitchen, looked out through the window and across the gravel to the big beech. The Ford Focus wasn’t there. And for no reason I can think of, other than paternal instinct running wild, I could see nothing but Kinsella and Fee, him the maverick charmer, her the woman rebounding from the break up of a long-term relationship. Had she really gone to see Tracy Miller last night? I reached for my phone where it sat charging on a designated shelf...
I must have taken a huge breath, or something, and left the phone exactly where it was, pending a more rational alternative presenting itself. I hurried upstairs to Ellie’s old room, opened the door. The bed hadn’t been slept in. Fairchild had gone as well. The room was pristine, just as she’d found it a month ago. She’d left nothing behind, not even a tissue in the waste basket.
Back out on the landing, Laura was coming down from Grogan. She had a mug in her hand and was sniffing at the dregs in the bottom of it. “He’s okay, but he’s been drugged. What’s happened, Nathan?”
“They’ve legged it. Kinsella and Fairchild, moonlight flit. Right under my bloody nose.”
And as I stood there looking at her frightened face all I could hear was the sound of some infernal domino rally, each tile toppling the next, as the signs and pointers to Kinsella’s real purpose over the last month fell face up. He’d never intended to give evidence. All he’d ever wanted was to escape from us and find the heroin. The guy had been playing us after all and it looked as though he’d won.
I showered, shaved and got dressed, all on automatic pilot. Downstairs again, I sat at the kitchen table, halfway between despair and anger, wanting the world to feel sorry for me. My grandmother on my father’s side had perfected the art of it, her greatest work being accomplished when she herself was the cause of any domestic upset. Her family would rally round and solve the problem which she had created. More often than not they apologised for somehow having been the root cause. It had never worked for me. And the coffee maker was playing up again, wheezing and spluttering in the corner. Its days were numbered.
I looked up when Laura entered. She was dressed and ready for action. She never dwelled on past events, even if they’d only occurred an hour ago. There was no point, she said. All energy should be concentrated on solving the problem. It’s a medical thing.
“So what next?” she asked.
I was still blaming others for what had happened. “You were all so bloody sympathetic towards the guy. You, Fee, Fairchild...”
“What difference did that make?”
“...the head lice, the impetigo, letting him win at chess.”
“He allowed me to win.”
I mimicked her. “ ‘His good looks, charm and confidence. A new man’? Then Fee playing dress-up, fighting me for his right to wear shoes, Fairchild fetching and carrying, teaching him how to use Facebook, for Christ’s sake...”
I rattled on. Back in June the man had been arrested by Humberside Police when he was shot in the leg at Speaker’s Farm. I reckoned he thought he’d wind up being charged with importing heroin, so he told Carew and Sweetman he’d seen Flaxman do the killing. Those two amateurs went for it, took his evidence, beefed it up, used it to nail someone they’d been after for years.
“And like a fool I argued the terms of his immunity from prosecution with Sillitoe...”
I took my anger out on the table. Nothing on it jumped as I brought my fist down, so I hit it again. Laura stood over me with a mug of coffee until it was safe to set it down. She said I needed to explain just one thing to her.
“If Flaxman was on remand in prison, why was Kinsella afraid of him? Why hide out?”
“If he was missing, he’d be thought of as the third victim, more grist to the prosecution mill. Meantime, he could poke around Speaker’s Farm, try and find the haul.”
I stood up quickly. It gives viewer and doer a sense of vigour. I paused and sat down again, saying I was getting slower, thicker, older by the day. I should’ve seen this coming from the morning he tried to escape. Grogan chained him up, we took his shoes, so the only option he had was to reel one of us in. He’d played on Fairchild’s sympathy, her unhappiness with the job and the promise of a share of the 15 million. I looked up at Laura.
“Teeth,” I said, quietly. “The one thing he did without making a song and dance about it was clean them.”
“So?”
“With breath like he had at the start, he couldn’t have got near Fairchild, let alone seduced her.” I slapped the table again and this time managed to slop my coffee. “From then on all he had to do was use his good looks, charm and confidence to win her over.”
She ignored my provocation, reached into a cupboard for the porridge and, despite my world having come to an end, she proceeded to make some.
“D’you know what bothers me?” she said as she stirred a poultice of oat flakes and water in a bowl. “The fact that you think it’s your responsibility. Pure vanity, on your part.”
“Laura, it is my responsibility. I frightened him off by telling him he’d be dead by Christmas. And without his evidence he probably will be.”
- 20 -
&nb
sp; An hour later I watched Blackwell walk the gravel beneath the big beech and approach the back door in a way I recognised all too well. This was someone who had yet to be told bad news. He was a devious man but not an especially confident one, and both aspects would be thrown into relief during the next half hour. Sillitoe walked behind him, Bewley the bag carrier trailed. As I rose from the kitchen table they spotted me through the window, yet Blackwell still knocked before entering.
He paused and beamed. “Morning, Nathan, Doctor Peterson, Sergeant...”
He looked round, presumably for Fairchild and Kinsella.
“They’ve gone,” I said.
It was an object lesson in turning hope to despair in a snap. They froze, Blackwell, Sillitoe, Bewley in that order.
“What do you mean?” Blackwell asked.
“What do you think I mean? Kinsella and Fairchild have legged it. Together.”
He took a moment to process the information, then another to stop himself bursting into tears by the look of it. He walked over to the table, removed the anorak and hung it over the back of a chair which he gradually sat down in. Dressed as ever, he was at least being predictable.
“I’ll pour the coffee,” Laura whispered.
“Would you like a hand?” Bewley asked.
I turned on her, unfairly. “She’s pouring coffee, for Christ’s sake, not cooking a five-course meal!”
She flinched and seemed to hold the pose as I explained the circumstances under which I’d discovered Kinsella’s and Fairchild’s absence and that Grogan had been drugged.
“Is he alright?” Blackwell asked.
“He’s upstairs, sleeping it off,” said Laura. “I think I know what he’s been given. I’ll confirm it later.”
“Are we sure she went willingly?” Blackwell continued.
I nodded. “Tidied her room before she left.”
“What time do you reckon that was?”
“After one this morning. I was up in the cabin till then.”
“You didn’t hear the car start?”
“It was out on the lane, parked on the grass patch. She must have left it there pending...”
“Have they taken weapons?”
“Cleared out the bread oven.”
Blackwell brought his hands up to his drooping head and seemed to catch it as it fell forwards. Sillitoe sat down at last; his henchgirl followed suit, quivering at the tension in the air, the prospect of stacks about to blow. Maybe criminal law wasn’t going to be as tedious as she’d first thought.
Blackwell surfaced and began to make plans for the immediate future. The coffee helped to clear his mind and gave us all something to do with our hands.
“First things first,” Blackwell said. “I’d like as much of this as possible kept under wraps.”
Sillitoe agreed. The trial was due to begin in six days’ time. Miracles might happen, Kinsella might be found and re-persuaded to give evidence...
“Grow up, Henry,” I yelled. “No one’ll ever see the man again. Y’ask me, he never intended to give evidence. All he’s ever wanted is the 15 million quid. I know it sounds less every time you say it, but it’s still worth going to the wire for.”
Laura threw in twopenn’orth from the sidelines, turning to Blackwell. “However much is kept under wraps, Commander, you will be informing Fairchild’s mother, I hope?”
Blackwell glanced at me, then away again. True to form he was going to ask someone else to do his dirty work, to break the news of her daughter’s disappearance to Grace Fairchild. That someone was me.
Sillitoe was shaking his head. “What I can’t understand is the attraction,” he said. “Pretty woman falls for absolute misfit. There’s the money, yes, but is that...?”
“Believe it or not, Henry, he had a way with the ladies.”
Sillitoe screwed up his face as if he’d bitten into a cooking apple when he thought it was an eater.
“Mr Hawk means he was a highly attractive creature,” said Laura. “He believes that women like DC Fairchild, Miss Bewley and I are susceptible to such men.”
“I thought my own daughter was, for God’s sake!”
“She’ll be delighted to hear that. May I be present when you tell her?”
Sillitoe had got rid of the taste in his mouth and went back to shaking his head. “I shouldn’t have asked you to get involved, Mr Hawk. You’ve been out of the game too long.”
Whatever he’d meant by it, it sounded like an accusation.
He held up both hands to fend me off. “The fault is entirely mine. We’ve been dealing with an extremely clever man.”
“He might be smarter than you, Henry, but I’m not done with him yet.”
“You just said no one’ll ever see the man again.”
“I was being emotional. I will see him again.”
Meantime, though, Sir James Garrod wouldn’t be too happy about losing the only witness they had. Why didn’t he think on that?
Sillitoe smiled. Old Jim wouldn’t be able to care less; he’d still be paid and had plenty of other work lined up. He glanced sidelong at Blackwell, as if peering round a corner at him. “And, of course, the ultimate responsibility for losing our man lies elsewhere.”
“The fault is with these two half-breeds, Carew and Sweetman,” I said. “Anxious to make a name for themselves by sending down a local bad boy.”
Blackwell agreed that he’d had doubts about their probity from the beginning, but the more he learned of Kinsella, the more innocent they began to look. I called him a bloody fool, accused him of defending his own kind. Besides, we knew sod all about Kinsella. What we did know we’d learned in the last hour.
And so the schoolboy discussion staggered on, from tepid insult to half-hearted accusation, until Tom Blackwell said something that really stuck in my craw.
“Regardless of fault, Nathan, I think you should step back for a while.”
I stared at him. It was still a tempting head to grab, especially with all that hair on it, but I held back.
“I agree,” said Sillitoe. “And please accept my thanks. There was nothing new to learn in Grimsby; it’s hardly your fault that Fairchild and Kinsella have taken off, that the case against Flaxman will collapse, that all that heroin...”
His was a fairly tasty head too. “Not my fault? Then why do you make it sound as if it is? Next thing you’ll say is I frightened him off...”
Laura tried stepping in. “To be fair, Nathan, I think Mr Sillitoe is just outlining the problems...”
I stood up. “No, he’s not. He’s looking for a bloody scapegoat.”
I’m not sure if things were about to get physical. I doubt it. Whatever the case, a taxi had just drawn up at the front gate and Fee had stepped out of it looking fragile. It took her an age to reach the back door, which gave us all breathing space. She opened it and just stood there, apparently reluctant to move her head.
“I feel like death,” she muttered. “And I’ve interrupted something, I can tell.”
Laura did the explaining, told Fee what had happened.
“And at one point your father rather touchingly feared it might have been you who’d run off with Kinsella.”
Fee looked at me. “You really thought ... me and that jerk?”
“I know, it was future tripping. Bad.”
Blackwell gently scissored the air to suspend our private discussion.
“First thing I must do is tell Jim, Sir James Garrod,” said Sillitoe. “I’ve no doubt he’ll open at the Bailey in the hope that his other evidence will be sufficient.”
“And if the case is thrown out?” I asked.
“That rather depends on what the police can discover between now and then.” He turned to Blackwell. “Presumably you’ll be working flat out...?”
Blackwell said he’d start by going to see Mr and Mrs Fairchild. Then he’d go back to Grimsby and put Carew and Sweetman on the spot, get the truth out of them, assign new blood to a search for Kinsella. All the old clichés.
“You can give me your mobile number,” I said.
“Why?” asked several people.
“Write it down.” I pointed to the blackboard on the wall next to the dresser. It had an ancient shopping list on it which she cleared with the heel of her hand, found the chalk and scratched out her number. That done the three of them left, Bewley with her eyes still sparkling, Blackwell and Sillitoe with eyes dead as haddocks’.
Laura went to the sink and filled a glass with water for Fee. Fee drank it in one and asked for another, then carefully slunk into Maggie’s dad’s rocker.
“I don’t know how you do it, Dad,” she said.
“What?”
“Drink like you do.”
“I take the glass, put it to my lips, tilt back my head...”
“You know what I mean. Too much. What would Mum say?”
“She’d say get off your father’s back.”
“Grogan doesn’t drink, Jodie Falconer doesn’t drink, Yukito doesn’t drink...”
“His religion?”
“His liver. He’d like to use it for another sixty years.”
The temperature under my collar was rising but I managed to break my train of thought and say, “How the hell did we get onto this?”
“Displacement activity,” said Laura, the peacemaker. “We’re skirting round the sad news about Petra Fairchild.”
“You don’t think she’s in danger, do you, Dad?”
I shrugged. “She’s served her purpose, got Kinsella out of the house, out of Grogan’s reach, and provided him with a car, weapons, details about the Flaxman case. She hasn’t found him the heroin, though, in spite of asking about it at every turn...”
“She’s discovered that it’s still out there,” said Fee. “Like I told you, she’s a difficult one to suss.”
I smiled from one to the other and pointed in the direction of the departed Blackwell. “And that slippery bastard has lumbered me with yet another of his chores. Did he tell Grogan he was suspended? No.”
Evil Turn (Nathan Hawk Mystery) Page 15