‘You know him? Who is he? I’ve only seen him from a distance.’
‘I’ve met him. I wouldn’t say I know him. But I know enough about him to suspect a whole lot more.’
‘Such as?’
They were both breathing hard now as they approached the spot where Daniel had left his backpack. He stopped and turned towards her.
‘Such as, he’s not been in the country long, and when he did come it wasn’t through Heathrow or Gatwick, or any of the conventional channels. And he didn’t come alone.’
Chris was watching him intently. ‘And …? Who do you think came with him?’
‘I think he brought Dennie Travers back from the dead. But then you know that, don’t you, Ms Haynes? Because Stella King is paying you to prove that very thing.’
TWELVE
‘Who are you?’ Chris Haynes demanded.
‘You know who I am: Daniel Whelan, friend of Tamiko Yoshida.’
‘Who? Oh, yes, I remember – the Japanese girl at the fundraiser. But you know that doesn’t answer my question. I saw you with Boo Travers.’
‘I saw you with Boo Travers,’ he countered.
‘If you know I’m working for Stella, then you must have realised I only made friends with Boo to try and win her confidence. What’s your interest?’
‘My only connection is through Tami,’ Daniel said, zipping his backpack up and hoisting it onto his shoulders. ‘I came to keep an eye on her as a favour to her fiancé, who’s a friend of mine. He was worried about a potential stalker, and she needed someone to drive the horsebox to shows because Natalie, who you also met at the fundraiser, has a broken leg. I was at a loose end, I stepped in. Tami knew Boo, but only to say hi to. The trouble started when she called in at Boo’s unexpectedly to drop off something she’d borrowed and saw Dennie.’
‘She did what?’ Chris exclaimed, pulling Daniel round to face her. She had a surprisingly strong grip. Taz growled a warning and she let go. ‘She saw Dennie Travers? Then why the hell didn’t she report it?’
‘Because she had no idea that’s who it was,’ Daniel said. ‘She didn’t know Boo back when Dennie was around, and the man she saw told her he was her brother. I didn’t guess until yesterday, and even then, when I showed Tami a photo, she wasn’t certain it was the same guy. He’s grown a heavy beard, I gather.’
Chris groaned. ‘When I think of all the times I’ve tried to drop in unexpectedly, with just that aim in mind – but they’ve got those bloody electric gates.’
‘Yeah, I know, but they’d been left open when we got there. Accidentally, I imagine. Just the luck of the draw.’
Daniel turned and glanced back down the hill to the shed. ‘He’s still there. If we want a look at the Land Rover, we’ll have to come back later, but I’ve a strong suspicion he’ll have moved it by then.’
Chris frowned again. ‘So, what’s so special about that Land Rover? And why does he keep it so far away from the house?’
‘I’m pretty sure it’s the one he used to drive into Tamiko’s car and kill her sister,’ Daniel said grimly.
‘He killed her sister? Why?’
‘Because one Japanese girl looks pretty much like another from a distance, and because she was driving Tami’s car.’
‘God, that’s awful! But if Tami didn’t recognise Dennie, why on earth did he do it?’
‘I think, because he could. Because the opportunity presented itself. Hana just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and paid the price, poor kid. I get the impression this Cal bloke might be something of a loose cannon. The police suspected it was a 4×4, possibly with bull bars, but they’ve never found it. In fact they didn’t find anything to convince them that it was anything more than an unfortunate hit-and-run accident.’
‘But you did?’
‘Not for sure, but I have a suspicious mind, and when Tamiko saw a photograph of Steven Allen at the fundraiser and pointed out that it wasn’t the man she’d seen at Rufford Manor that time, and Boo tried to make us believe it was her half-brother Tami had seen, I decided to check it out. I had already met our friend down there, whose name is John McAllum, or Cal to his friends – if he’s got any, so I had an inkling something was going on in the Travers camp.’ He gave Chris a brief description of his first encounter with the man and what he’d found out on the Internet about his early and inglorious association with the young Dennie Travers.
‘So then you checked out the half-brother?’
‘Yes. When someone laid an elaborate trap and tried to abduct Tami, the night after she spoke out about Boo’s brother, I found I had a burning desire to see whether Boo did indeed have a half-brother. As it turns out, she does. But as they’re not on speaking terms, let alone visiting terms, and he is, anyway, about twenty years younger than the man Tami described, I figured we could rule him out. So Boo Travers was covering for someone. That was when I started to wonder whether the dead husband was really so dead, after all. From pictures I’ve seen, the man Tami saw fits the description pretty well, or at least as well as anyone can with a beard covering half their face.’
‘Stella has been convinced he faked his death, all along,’ Chris said as they topped the hill and began to descend the narrow track through the bracken on the other side. ‘At first I wasn’t so sure, even though it did get him out of a sticky spot.’
‘What kind of sticky spot? One would have thought that finally getting his divorce and moving in with his lover and family, he would have got what he wanted.’
‘Oh, he had,’ she said. ‘Until an employee with a grudge, loyal to the old guard, so to speak, raised questions in Stella’s mind about the legitimacy of some of the deals he’d been doing. That’s where I came in. It’s wonderful what you can find out when you have a company’s computer system at your disposal.’
‘So you’re not just an IT consultant. Internet security, don’t you call it?’
‘That’s part of it – the official part that’s on my website. Stella called me in ostensibly to check the health of the system and advise about possible upgrades. They had had it done before, and I may have led them to believe I was from the same company,’ she said with an air of innocence. ‘We picked a time when Dennie was away on business for a few days and I was granted access to almost everything; I wandered about the building quite freely, and what I found, with a little judicious digging and double-checking, was that, not content with marrying the boss’ granddaughter and being promoted in leaps and bounds to the very top and a partnership, no less, with all the financial perks that entails – and there were many, believe me – our Dennie was channelling a steady stream of extra wealth into his own pockets by way of payments to bogus companies that subsequently went bust, along with a general skimming of the profits.
‘I soon realised we had enough to build a good case against him and as I’d stretched my time at TKC about as long as I credibly could, I got out. I wrote her a detailed report and shortly after, Stella turned everything over to the police. I gather the fraud squad were about to pounce when it seems that someone loyal to Dennie got wind of the fact that the shit was about to hit the fan and warned him.’
‘Hence the lost at sea scenario.’
‘As you say. I gather the trip had already been planned. It was meant to be a celebration of his meeting Boo, twenty-something years ago. Talk about rubbing Stella’s nose in it. It beggars belief that so many people would happily go along with the whole thing, when it was so blatantly immoral. I mean they could hardly be unaware when Dennie and Boo’s grown-up sons were there.’
‘Hey – it was a free booze up! And anyway, I find there’s nothing like money for helping people see only what they want to,’ Daniel observed. ‘So the party cruise was planned and he adapted it for his own ends. Clever. Plenty of witnesses to testify that it was a tragic accident. Strong currents to account for the fact that a body would never be found. Presumably Harrison was in on it. Did Boo know what was going on?’
‘I don�
��t know,’ Chris admitted. They were walking along the track on the forest floor now, heading for the car park. ‘I have to say, I hope not. For in spite of knowing what I know about her and the way she has lived her life, I find I can’t help liking her. I shouldn’t, but I do. She’s just a likeable person.’
‘I know what you mean,’ Daniel said. ‘I suppose that’s what kept Dennie living a double life all those years, that and the kids, I suppose. So why did he wait so long to divorce Stella? Was it the terms of the grandfather’s will?’
‘You have been doing your homework,’ Chris said. ‘I’m impressed.’
Daniel shrugged. ‘Guesswork.’
‘Yeah, well, according to Stella, her grandfather never made a secret of the fact that on his death, his majority holding of the shares would be split between Dennie and herself. I think he thought it was a way of keeping them together, because without each other, neither of them would have a controlling share. But he reckoned without Dennie’s cunning, because having installed Harrison in a position on the board, their combined shares gave them the majority. You have to remember that at that point in time, no one seems to have guessed that Harrison was his son – he’s looking a bit more like his father now he’s getting older but he was very young when he joined the company. Also, Stella took no interest in the day-to-day running of the company and quite possibly never met him face to face. It was only after old Aubrey King’s death that he “came out” and there was a huge amount of smothered resentment amongst his fellow workers.’
‘I imagine Stella wasn’t too happy, either.’
‘She was already reeling from the divorce, To have him parading his “other family” in front of everyone in the company her grandfather built up, was total humiliation.’
‘I saw her yesterday,’ Daniel told Chris. ‘Tami was giving her a massage and I went along. She’s incredibly bitter. But did she really never guess that Dennie had another woman? He must have spent so much time away, surely?’
‘I don’t know whether she knew, deep down, that he had another life but didn’t want to admit it, even to herself. I mean, if she’d hired a detective he’d soon have been found out. But I’m pretty sure she didn’t know about the kids, and that was the ultimate betrayal, for a woman who couldn’t have any.’
‘So what happened to the investigation after Dennie disappeared?’
‘Nothing. Oh, they looked into the evidence, of course, but Dennie had been careful not to involve Harrison or anyone else in his schemes. The fraud was entirely down to him, and as he was apparently beyond prosecution, the case was closed; the losses written off. According to Stella, he left all his shares to Boo and Harrison. She now holds only slightly more than a quarter. Can you wonder at it that she was bitter?’
‘Not at all,’ Daniel said. ‘So, did you ever find out who warned Dennie that the game was up?’
‘No. I suppose even a bastard like that inspires loyalty in some people. Someone probably foresaw a handsome reward for such a gem of information.’
‘But that argues that someone else must have known about the fraud, because if, as you say, no one but him knew, who could warn him that it was about to be uncovered?’
Chris shrugged. ‘I guess we’ll probably never know.’
Daniel filed the thought away. He didn’t like loose ends but it could wait.
‘So, what now?’ Chris asked, then. ‘The police?’
‘Tamiko’s husband is police,’ Daniel told her. ‘I shared my theory with him but he wanted more than supposition. That’s, by and large, what I was doing here today, until I saw your car. The thing is – you haven’t got enough to take to the police, or I’d imagine you’d have done so – and neither have I. Between us, we have more, but nothing that amounts to proof. I think we need to have irrefutable evidence that they’ll act on instantly, or we might just find that our quarry has done a bunk a second time.’
They had reached the cars now, and Chris picked Nipper up to keep him from committing suicide on the busy road. She looked at Daniel through narrowed eyes.
‘Are you saying what I think you’re saying?’
‘I’m saying that money has influence almost everywhere, and that we should consider no one to be above corruption,’ he stated blandly.
‘That’s what I thought you were saying,’ she said. ‘Bloody hell! Tell me again what you do for a living.’
‘At the moment I’m a kind of minder. Lately, I have been a truck driver,’ Daniel said. ‘Before that I was in the police force and believe me, I have had enough experience of corruption to last me a lifetime.’
Chris looked at him keenly.
‘I believe you. I’ve seen that look before. So, what do you suggest we do now? Have I totally loused things up getting caught by this Cal bloke?’
‘No, I don’t think so. Your story was believable and thank God, your camera card shouldn’t give anything away – unless there was anything else on there from earlier?’
She shook her head.
‘No. I always download and then clear it. So, when did this McAllum come on the scene?’
‘Only a couple of weeks ago, I think. In fact, I’m almost certain of it.’
‘That fits. About three weeks ago, maybe less, Boo invited me over to ride with her as I had done several times before, and then, over lunch, she broke down and poured her heart out about Spencer’s illness. It was the first time she had really talked to me about it. I think there’d been bad news at his latest meeting with his consultant and I tell you, at that point I felt so incredibly sorry for her, I was within an inch of chucking the whole thing in, but Stella can be equally as compelling. Anyway, the next time I called, she almost cut me dead. I thought, perhaps she was regretting letting her guard down like that. She’s an immensely strong woman.’
‘She probably was regretting it, but not for that reason. It’s my guess she’d got word her husband was going to try and get back to see Spencer, and she couldn’t afford to have anyone close. I drove Tamiko to a show near Barnstaple that weekend – her sister was alive then and we all went. That was where I first met Boo and Harrison.’
‘Harrison was at a show? That’s odd in itself. Boo says he rode as a child but these days has no interest at all in the horses.’
‘Yes, he told me that himself. Watersports are his thing, he said. Helpful if you want to stage a fake drowning.’
‘He has a diving instructor’s certificate,’ Chris confirmed. ‘I believe he and Dennie went diving together a time or two, though Dennie’s thing was more sailing. I believe they often went to Portishead, and Harrison used to go down to Devon or Cornwall for the surfing. So, for the drowning, are you thinking scuba gear tethered to a weight on the sea floor at a prearranged location?’
‘Something like that, with a boat to pick him up somewhere,’ Daniel agreed. ‘And maybe he came back in much the same way. When we left the show at Barnstaple, Tami commented that Boo’s lorry was going the wrong way – turning away from home. I didn’t think much of it, she could have been going for petrol or something, but in hindsight, she could also have been picking up Dennie and Cal if they arrived the night before and had been lying low for the day.’
‘Why bring Cal with him? It sounds as though he’s a bit of a liability.’
‘You’re right. Without him stirring things up, Dennie could have been and gone without anyone being the wiser, except perhaps you. I assume the plan is for him to go back again – it would be madness to think he could stay for very long. But I think Cal is probably a kind of fixer. I imagine he made the arrangements. They go way back. They were partners in crime years before Dennie met Stella and started moving up in the world. Maybe Dennie has been staying with him, abroad. Possibly he’s been a go-between – we can only guess at how Boo and Dennie have stayed in touch. It’s likely he helped him get away initially, I’d say. All I can say for sure is that the night they tried to abduct Tami – or whatever they were trying to do to her – I had quite a turn-up with someon
e in the dark and ended up banging his head on the road—’
‘Ah, that’s why you look like you’ve been scrapping,’ she said, interrupting.
‘Yeah.’ Daniel touched the bruise on his face; it was still tender. ‘Anyway, I relieved that person of the contents of his pockets and one of the things he had on him was a receipt for an Indian takeaway from Lynton, in Devon. It was his first mistake. He’s been so careful all along, wearing gloves, using unregistered phones and throwing them away; leaving nothing for forensics. Even so, I didn’t make the connection until today, when Cal took off his cap and I saw the cut on his forehead.’
‘Yes, I saw that,’ she said. ‘So given you’re pretty sure it was him that night and we know about the Land Rover, are you still saying we haven’t got enough to go to the police?’
‘Ordinarily, I’d chance it, but this time – given the history of the case – I’d like to see if we can’t set our rabbits running before we loose the dogs.’
‘You want to scare them into making a dash for it? But isn’t that a bit risky? What if they go when we’re not looking?’
‘But we will be looking. That’s where you come in,’ Daniel told her. ‘I suggest you use the bike, it’s easier to tuck out of sight and they won’t be expecting it.’
‘In spite of your best efforts to tell everyone the other night,’ she reminded him sardonically. ‘But even though I might look like superwoman, even I can’t watch them twenty-four seven. I have to sleep sometimes.’
‘I don’t imagine they’ll take off immediately. I think your performance just now was probably convincing enough to put Cal’s mind at rest for the time being. Keep a general look out, as you have been and leave it with me. Give me your number and I’ll be in touch.’
‘OK. But don’t let me down, Daniel Whelan. I’ve been working on this for so long – I don’t want him to slip through my hands now, when we’re so close.’
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