Blood Ties: Obsession, secrets, desire and murder (A Jack Le Claire Mystery)

by Kelly Clayton

Ana shrugged. “It seems crazy, but I guess he could have been tipsy and slipped. But what was he doing there in the first place? And not just at the pool house. What was he doing at the party? He knew I was waitressing there and never said a word. The police say they’ll be treating his death as suspicious until they know more. What does that even mean?”

  Daria shrugged and disappeared into the kitchen, returning with an opened bottle of wine. As she poured two glasses, she was dismissive of the scene with Basil.

  “He is a fool and wouldn’t have done you any real harm. You must learn to stand up for yourself, Ana. Men are all bastards, and you need to learn how to control them.”

  Ana nodded in agreement; she didn’t have the strength to disagree with the strong-willed Daria.

  “And I am pleased that your job worked out. A good job makes all the difference.”

  “Do you enjoy yours?”

  “For sure. Basil and Lena are not so bad to work for once you know how to deal with them.”

  “It must make you feel good, helping out so many girls coming to the island.”

  A quick smile flashed across Daria’s face. “Of course, it is a pleasure to help people get settled. You shouldn’t be alone all the time. Would you like to join me for supper tomorrow night? “

  “Yes, please, thanks.” She needed a respite from being left alone with her own thoughts.

  “Good, meet me outside here at seven thirty. That way you don’t have to see creepy Basil.” Daria paused and then asked, “Have you heard from Irena?”

  “No. I am disappointed, but what can I say? She can’t have thought that much of me.”

  Daria was sympathetic, and her look softened with understanding. “Never mind; people move on. Jersey is that kind of place.”

  Ana was overcome with tiredness and said her good-byes and left. She ran down the stairs as softly as she could; she did not want to face either Basil or the sharp-tongued Lena. Once outside, she made a quick decision. Pulling out her mobile, she dialled a number she had recently stored. It was answered after a few short rings. “Hello, Mr Adamson, this is Ana. I am sorry to bother you, but have you heard from Irena?”

  She could just hear his barely audible sigh. The impatience in his voice was more apparent. “Ana, you’ve caught me at a bad time – Stop it! Sorry about that, the kids are playing up merry hell. They miss their mum. As do I. Anyway, that is enough of me. No, I haven’t heard anything, and I don’t expect to. You’ll just have to accept Irena’s moved on. Now I’m afraid I have to go.”

  “Wait, please. I think you should call the police. I am worried, and I don’t think she would disappear without telling me. I can call them if you’re too busy.”

  There was a long pause. When he spoke, his voice sounded pitying. “Ana, you seem like a good kid, but Irena, well, I don’t think you knew her at all. After she left, I discovered some things were missing – the petty cash we kept in a jar in the kitchen, plus some perfume and clothes that belonged to my wife. She has just run off.”

  In her heart, she recognised the truth in his words. “Thank you. I am sorry to have bothered you.”

  “Ana, don’t worry. Irena is a survivor. I am sure she’s fine.”

  Chapter Ten

  Honfleur Manor sat atop a rocky incline, bordered by the sea on one side and countryside on the others.

  Dewar let out a gasp of surprise as the car sped past the manor’s main gates. “I thought we were going in?”

  “We are, I hope.”

  Before Dewar could satisfy her curiosity, Le Claire turned into a narrow lane. It went straight on for a few minutes, and then, just before it veered off to the right, Le Claire drove off the road and parked on the scrubland that faced the dense woods.

  As they exited the car, he pointed at the tree line and said, “Come on, it’s just up here if I remember right.”

  He pushed aside low-hanging branches and pointed to a well-worn dirt path. He knew his smile must look mischievous as he motioned for Dewar to follow. They bent low as they pushed their way through the tangled copse. The undergrowth was trampled, and small insects swarmed around them, filling the air with their humming. Shafts of sunlight speared through the tree branches and cast dappled shadows on the ground. Le Claire could feel dampness oozing from the leaves underfoot; a musty smell assaulted his nostrils, and his mind jumped back twenty years.

  “I was ten when I first came here. My friend’s big brother had shown him this place, and the next day he’d called for me and we’d cycled here. Our rucksacks were filled with lemonade and sandwiches.

  “How sweet, your mum sent you with a picnic.”

  Le Claire was caught in his memories, and his words were unguarded. “No, that was Martha. She was our housekeeper, and she always made sure us boys were fed.”

  From the look on Dewar’s face, he realised he had given away rather more of his background than he had wanted. Dewar would have heard talk in the station of his being a fancy little rich boy, but he didn’t need to corroborate it.

  His mind was now firmly in the present with a dim echo of the past. “There it is, and it hasn’t been fixed in all these years. In fact, it has just got worse.”

  Here, at the densest part of the woods, time and the elements had worn away sections, leaving an open area of about two feet across; a handy route for small boys to sneak into the manor’s grounds, or anyone else for that matter. He checked the area in front of the gap; the leaves were compacted. Someone had come this way recently.

  “Call it in, Dewar. Get the CSI guys. We’ll head on in through the undergrowth so we’ll skirt the path.”

  Dewar dutifully called for support, but Le Claire could sense her unease. “What’s up?”

  “Nothing, sir.”

  “I thought we’d got over you sir-ing me half to death. Come on, what’s the issue?”

  “I just don’t like insect-ridden creepy, damp, smelly woods,” she snapped.

  “You’ll be fine.” She had wrestled a gun-wielding murderer to the ground in one of their recent cases. Now she was freaking out at the thought of a daddy longlegs? “Come on.”

  He stepped to the right of the path, into the thick foliage. He heard long sighs and heavy steps as Dewar followed close behind. On the worn pathway, the leaves and heavy branches had been naturally thinned after decades of small feet and inquisitive hands beating a path to the manor’s back door. Before Gillespie, the manor had been owned by the UK-based heirs of a retired military man. For over thirty years, they had let the place decay until only a man with a fortune as large as Aidan Gillespie’s could afford to buy and renovate such a white elephant. With absent owners, the place had become an unofficial public amenity. Families came to picnic, kids to play and teenagers to hang about. Young lovers had often crept this way as well.

  Le Claire recalled the last time he had sneaked into the manor’s grounds. He hadn’t been a ten-year-old then, but an adventurous eighteen-year-old with a fast motorbike and a pretty girlfriend. As he showed her where he had played as a boy, they’d ended up in a game of another sort.

  “Le Claire, is something wrong?”

  He’d stopped. Dewar was so close behind him he could hear her breathing. The late summer sun couldn’t find much passage in the woods, and the air was chilled. He hadn’t noticed. His memories must have kept him warm.

  “Sorry, I was just wool-gathering. We’re here.”

  Through a gap in the dense tree line, they could see manicured lawns, carefully pruned bushes and symmetrically planted shrubs. The garden was neat, contained and under control. They faced the back of the main house; to their right lay the pool annex. A lone glass door was set into the back wall, and that’s where they were headed. The crime scene guys had finished, taken all from the site that they could and handed access back to Gillespie. Le Claire reached out and pressed down on the long metal bar handle, and the door swung open.

  “Anyone could have accessed the grounds and
pool house this way. We need to spread our net wider.”

  #

  Laura had spent the day at the apartment; even Sarah Hamlyn hadn’t been so hard-hearted as to tell her to book into a hotel. Laura hadn’t spoken to her. Scott’s mother had left a message that morning asking her not to call but saying that she could stay in the apartment until after the funeral, which would be on Wednesday. If, IF, she wanted to attend the actual funeral, the cold voice had said it would probably be best if she didn’t go to the gathering afterwards at a nearby hotel.

  She’d gone for a walk. The apartment block had a private beach access. Long, wide steps led to the line of shingled top shore below the sea wall, which slowly faded to soft, creamy sand. She’d strolled from Greve D’Azette to the beach at Green Island, breathing in the tangy sea air, listening to the whooping gulls as they gracefully swept over the bay. Green Island itself was a sheltered suntrap, famous for its preternatural stillness; its rocky seabed, exposed by the fierce tidal movement, was typical of the east of the island. She’d bought a Styrofoam cup of tea and a bacon roll from the kiosk and sat on one of the benches gazing out to sea. A nearby plaque told her that she was on the southernmost part of the British Isles. She’d drunk the tea and thrown away the roll. She’d barely eaten since Scott had died.

  She had walked back along the beach to the empty apartment, and had fallen into an exhausted sleep in the afternoon. Now, as the sun sank gracefully past the horizon, she mixed a strong gin and tonic and sat on the balcony. The colour had leached from the day and the sky and a low cloud formation buttressed the horizon like a faraway mountain range. The sun had sunk low, casting an ethereal rosy glow over the sand. From nowhere, fiery crimson streaks lit the sky as the sun began its descent to give way to the night. It was a sunset to watch with someone you loved, but Laura was now on her own, again.

  This was a high-end development, and the walls were thick slabs of granite. It was only out here, on the long balcony, that she could hear any neighbourly noise at all. The sliding of a patio door, the clink of glasses, the scratch of cutlery on dinner plates, the murmur of voices. It felt comforting, made her feel less isolated.

  Until she met Scott, she hadn’t even known what it was like to feel you had someone to rely on, someone to be in your corner. She had opened herself up to him, allowed her defences to drop. She had cared for him so much and wished he hadn’t acted so foolishly, for foolish he had been. She felt a rising anger that bubbled away under the surface. He had brought this on himself, and where did that leave her? Waiting for the police to come?

  #

  Le Claire sat up in bed, crumpled covers around his waist and a light sheen of sweat covering his body. The dream was already fading, the images mere shadows, but the sensation of being trapped, not being able to breathe, still lingered. He carefully eased himself out of bed so as not to wake the slumbering Sasha, who lay beside him. He rose and, opening the blinds a little, looked out across the garden. The moon was high, casting shadows amongst the shifting trees and bushes; the night belonged to nocturnal animals of every kind, and to those who could not sleep for the demons that chased them.

  The soft voice floated across the room. “Jack, what are you doing? Come back to bed.”

  Sasha was lying on her side, naked to the waist, her dark hair splayed over the stark white pillowcase. She sat up in bed, and he regretted that she automatically pulled the covers up. “It’s chilly, come here.” She fumbled on the bedside cabinet, found the clock and her sigh was a gentle echo in the room. “It’s 3:00 a.m. Come on. You need your sleep.”

  He complied, lay on his back and pulled Sasha into his arms, her head resting on his chest. Her breath fanned his skin as she spoke.

  “This is becoming a habit. We spent last night at my place, and tonight we’re at yours. Do you think we’re doing the right thing?”

  He held her closer, kissed the top of her head. “It feels right.”

  She burrowed in until it felt like they were sharing the same skin. “Let’s play it by ear, then. So what woke you up?”

  He hesitated, didn’t want to open that can of worms.

  She spoke into the silence. Her voice was wary. “Did you dream? Did you?”

  “I can’t remember.”

  “Oh, Jack, are the nightmares still as bad?”

  “No, it’s fine. I’m fine.” His voice didn’t sound convincing, even to himself.

  “You can talk to me, you know that now, I hope.”

  In the dark, her voice was a comfort and a fear. He hadn’t been able to talk to her last time, and that’s when it had all gone wrong. Could he guarantee it would be different this time? He held her tight and lay awake long after she had gone back to sleep.

  Chapter Eleven

  The incident room team was doing what they did best, sorting through the mundane, cross-checking alibis and digging deep into the clutter and debris of a life, searching for cause, motive, clues – and unfortunately getting nowhere fast.

  Le Claire and Dewar sat in front of the main white board at the far end of the incident room – the somewhat sparse whiteboard.

  Scott Hamlyn’s picture took centre place. It was one borrowed from his apartment. He stood on his balcony, the sunlit sea glistening behind him, champagne glass in hand. Le Claire wondered if Laura Brown had taken the photograph. Connecting lines led to the names of family, friends, persons of interest. All supposition so far, as there wasn’t much to go on. Work colleagues described Hamlyn as a loner who had recently blossomed. They thought it was love. The few who had met her couldn’t match the beautiful Laura with the very ordinary Scott. But together they had been, and if he’d lived, it looked like they’d have made a match of it. When questioned, no one seemed to have any idea how he had got his bruises. Le Claire rather thought they hadn’t cared enough to ask.

  It was taking some time to trawl through the statements from the party guests and compile a report, accounting for the attendees and where they were at the time. There was the press to deal with as well. They wanted updates and so did the general public. Social media, especially Facebook, was rife with incorrect information and accusations. People forgot, or just didn’t seem to realise, that investigations took time, that every angle had to be researched, analysed. It wasn’t all light-bulb moments, flashing lights and car chases. His phone rang. Dewar jerked as if she had been sleeping, probably mesmerised by the banality of what they had to go on so far. He checked the caller ID and mentally straightened up in his chair.

  “Sir?”

  The chief’s voice was brusque.

  “There’s been an incident. Sir Hugh Mallory has been found dead. It’s a suspected suicide. Given who he is, I need you to get to Fairland Fort and do the initial report. I don’t assume there is anything urgent pending?”

  He took the dig on the chin. He knew they had nothing so far.

  “Okay, sir, we’re on it, and point taken.”

  Le Claire quickly updated Dewar and got the expected puzzled look. “Why send you? We don’t have any details on cause of death yet.”

  “Mallory was a jurat. I know you’ve not been in the island long enough to deal with any criminal matters in court, but we don’t conduct trial by a jury. The elected jurats are effectively the judges of facts. They come from all walks of life. This is not a position only taken up by the privileged; it’s about those who are respected in the community, who are grounded. It’s an honorary post, and those elected are held in high esteem as the height of respectability. The chief will want this dealt with appropriately.”

  “So what do we know about him?”

  “He came to Jersey in his fifties. Made his money in something or other, inherited a baronetcy from his father and became high profile in the island. He and his wife are big patrons of several charities. The news will be shocking. Let’s get going.”

  #

  Fairland Fort was a landmark, jutting above the headland on the northern coast. Once importa
nt coastal defence posts, these Martello Towers were built in the Napoleonic wars. This particular one had been redeveloped into a family home. Sir Hugh had bought it several years later and completed its transformation into a showpiece.

  The gated entrance opened onto a circular drive, the wide, busy borders crammed with colourful blooms. The main building, the original fort, was long and low and buttressed along one side by the high and rounded Martello tower, its slatted windows remnants of its initial use.

  Le Claire beckoned for Dewar to follow. “Come on, this won’t be pleasant.”

  Several police cars, a few other vehicles and an ambulance crowded the space in front of the open front doors. They were met by a uniformed officer.

  “Sir, Dr Viera is with the deceased. Lady Mallory is in one of the downstairs rooms with her granddaughter.”

  “Thanks, I’ll go to Viera first.” They were directed to the back of the house, where they were shown into a huge space that was strewn with paintings. Brightly coloured canvasses were hanging up, leaning against the walls and laid out on several easels and trestle tables. Open-fronted, ceiling-high cupboards held pots of paint, tubs of brushes and rolls of paper. Viera was bent over a figure lying on the floor when he noticed Le Claire and Dewar. As the doctor stood, Le Claire got a proper look at the body. Sir Hugh lay on his back beside an upturned chair. He looked strangely peaceful, his features soft, as if in the midst of a deep sleep. His striped shirt was unbuttoned, and his chest was a bloodied mess, the gunshot wound a vicious blot on his tanned skin. An elegant pistol lay on the floor beside him.

  Le Claire commanded, “Tell me what happened.”

  “Lady Mallory found Sir Hugh around 10:30 a.m. We’ll need to do a post-mortem, but from the discolouring and body temperature, I’d hazard he hadn’t died long before that.”

  He pointed to marks on one hand. “We’ve got gunpowder residue. From that and the angle of the shot, it looks self-inflicted.”

  “Any note?”

  At Viera’s head shake, Le Claire said, “Okay, you carry on, and I’ll await the final report.”