Megan nodded vigorously in agreement, although Toby noticed Maya just looked on, her expression blank.
‘Justin feels . . .’ Brooke searched for the word. ‘Betrayed. And I kind of understand that. I’m sorry, Dad.’
She hesitated and then rushed over to give him a quick kiss on the forehead. Megan got to her feet to give her a hug, as did Maya. With a wave to Lars and Toby, she was gone.
‘She should have stayed without him,’ Bill said.
‘You make her choose between us and her husband, she’s going to choose her husband,’ Megan said. ‘And you can see Justin’s point.’
‘I cannot see Justin’s point,’ Bill growled. ‘I thought that guy had more sense. He used to.’
Maya was still standing from her hug with her sister. ‘Daddy?’
‘Yes?’ Bill’s expression was wary.
‘I’m really sorry, but I’m going to have to fly out of Heathrow this afternoon. To New York. The airline has been in touch. I’m really, really sorry.’
‘What! Didn’t you tell them there was a family emergency?’
‘I’d cashed in some chips to spend Thanksgiving here. They wanted me to do a New York sector and I couldn’t say no. Airlines are tough on their employees these days.’
‘Didn’t you tell them about Alice?’
‘I didn’t tell them my sister had been accused of murder. Hopefully, they won’t find out. I’m sorry I’ve got to leave, Daddy. It’s not like I can do anything useful here.’
Bill shook his head and looked down at his coffee. ‘When are you going?’
Maya glanced at the clock on the wall. ‘In about an hour.’
‘OK,’ said Bill, defeated. ‘Do what you have to do.’ He got to his feet. ‘I’ll be in my study.’
‘I’d better go and pack,’ said Maya after he’d left the room.
‘You’ve got a boyfriend there,’ said Megan.
‘What?’
Megan just raised her eyebrows. Maya coloured and repeated herself. ‘I’ve got to go and pack.’
‘She always does that,’ said Megan, after Maya had left the room. ‘If there’s any family trouble, she runs.’
‘How did you know there was a boyfriend?’
‘I could tell. There are lots of boyfriends with Maya. There’s always a boyfriend. But I can’t believe she is walking out on us now.’
Megan grinned sheepishly at Toby. ‘I’m the only sister left. That doesn’t bode well for Alice.’
‘Your dad will do what’s necessary,’ said Lars.
‘I hope so,’ said Megan, doubt in her voice.
Toby buttered his toast.
‘I’m going for a walk,’ said Lars.
‘Can you hang on a couple of minutes until I’ve finished this?’ said Toby. ‘And we had better take Rickover.’
Twenty-Two
Bill kept his house a little on the warm side, in Toby’s opinion, and so it was a relief to get out into the fresh Norfolk air.
It was a clear late-autumn day, with only a few white puffs of cloud skipping through the sky. There was a stiff breeze, and it was cold on Toby’s cheeks, invigorating.
Lars headed out across the dyke towards the sea, and Toby was happy to follow him. The marsh was alive with the gurgle of water and the fluster of small unseen birds. The tide was low in the creek, and a pair of curlews picked their way carefully over the mud towards a beached red fishing boat, tied uselessly to its orange mooring. Behind them, the village of grey flint and red brick curled up safe and cosy between the marsh and the low ridge behind it, watched over by the windmill. Rickover was happy sniffing the morning news: the dyke was a favourite of dog walkers.
They didn’t speak for several minutes. Toby was wary of Lars. He was a criminal, he had been in jail. He had just admitted to killing someone thirty-five years before. Yet something drew Toby to him. Maybe it was Lars’s vulnerability – life had given him a rough ride. But Toby also sensed integrity in Lars. Loyalty. Honour. Despite himself, he almost trusted him.
Almost.
Toby hunched up in his coat and scarf. ‘This has got to seem cold to you.’
‘Are you kidding?’ said Lars. ‘This is nothing compared to Wisconsin. And it’s good to be outside.’
‘Yes, sorry,’ Toby said. ‘I was thinking of the Caribbean.’
‘I try not to,’ said Lars.
They were at the dunes, and followed the board path through the sand, temporarily sheltered from the wind. A cloud of small brown birds erupted from a black thorn bush next to them, chattered and settled down twenty yards away.
‘I should probably tell the police about that,’ he said. ‘The jail time.’
‘Don’t they know?’
‘Not yet,’ said Lars. ‘I’m kind of hoping they don’t find out. They may check with the States, but I haven’t gotten a criminal record there. Maybe they’ll never figure it out?’
‘I have no idea,’ Toby replied. ‘But this is a murder investigation; they are going to be thorough.’
‘At least I’ve got a good alibi. Brooke, Justin and me went back to the Cottage after the game. We’d all flown here from the States – we all had jet-lag. Brooke and Justin stayed up late in the Cottage living room; they would have seen me leave.’
‘Justin will probably tell them you killed Craig.’ Part of Toby was glad of that; it might distract attention from Alice. Even if Lars was innocent it would be good to muddy the investigation.
Maybe he wasn’t innocent, despite his alibi.
‘I guess he will,’ said Lars. ‘But that was investigated. The Navy didn’t even convict me of manslaughter, just assault. After what had happened on the submarine, everyone was happy to keep things quiet.’
‘Why did you tell him?’ Toby said. ‘It’s obvious he’s going to tell the police.’
‘Bill’s in a lot of trouble right now, with Alice being a suspect and everything. And I get why Justin is so upset about Craig. I’m still upset about Craig; he was a good friend of mine. I just couldn’t sit and watch Bill’s family being torn apart in front of my eyes.’ He sighed. ‘Justin’s right. We should have told him the truth long ago.’
‘And it really was an accident?’
Lars didn’t reply. They emerged from the dunes on to the beach. The tide was most of the way out, and the sea was barely visible – just a line of breakers in the distance, whispering to them over the sand.
They stopped to take in the view. Now, in clear sunlight rather than the gloom of the day before, the vastness of sand, sea and sky opened out before them. London, even the coast road and the sleepy village of Barnholt, was far behind them, well out of sight behind the dunes. Rickover scampered off.
‘Not really, no. I meant to hit him. I meant to hurt him, not kill him. And when he fell and hit his head, it didn’t seem too serious. But he died. The Navy should have court martialled me for manslaughter.’
‘Is that when you left?’ Toby asked.
‘Yes. They gave me an honourable discharge. I was out of there as soon as possible.’
‘Because of Craig?’
‘Yeah. And because we had nearly blown up the world. I didn’t want to be part of it any more. I hated the Navy. I hated America.’
Lars started off across the sand towards the distant waves. ‘I went to Brazil. My dad’s folks still lived in Rio – they were schoolteachers like my dad. I thought I could learn Portuguese, become a Brazilian, sail. I used to enjoy sailing on Lake Michigan with my dad and I thought I could be a proper sailor, not a mass murderer skulking under the waves, hugging nuclear missiles. That’s why I originally joined the Navy, you know? To go out to sea. Turned out I ended up going under the sea.’
‘Brazil sounds idyllic.’
‘It didn’t work out. Brazil’s economy was in a bad way after the debt crisis. The locals were friendly, but they treated me as a Yankee. A Yankee without money is a Yankee without a point as far as they were concerned. But I met this American guy who had friends in To
rtola, friends who could get us a job, and so I decided to tag along with him up there.’
Lars glanced at Toby. ‘The friends weren’t exactly legit. At first I earned a little money by looking the other way. Then I scraped enough together to buy my own boat, with a loan from the friends. I did some charters for tourists. But I did other work too. And one day I was caught. In Guadeloupe.’
‘And ended up in jail?’
‘That’s right. And I’d still be there if Bill hadn’t gotten me a hot-shot lawyer.
Bill has always been there for me. He understands. He’s always understood.’
‘He left the Navy too, didn’t he?’
Lars nodded. ‘Yes. A lot of people thought that was a shame. Bill could have gone far, maybe all the way like Robinson.’
‘What about the captain? If he had lived, would he have become an admiral?’
Lars sighed. ‘I don’t know. Yeah, probably.’
Once again, Toby wondered how Commander Driscoll had died.
They strode across the reddish sand, skirting a wide, shallow pool of seawater left by the retreating tide. A band of washed-up razor-clam shells crunched underfoot. The beach was empty with the exception of three figures walking a bounding dog along the base of the dunes.
‘I’m sorry about Alice,’ Lars said. ‘But I’m sure Bill will get her out. I told you how he got me off the worst charges in Guadeloupe.’
‘You know Alice isn’t guilty, don’t you?’ Toby said.
‘Uh-huh,’ said Lars in agreement. But unenthusiastic agreement. Lars didn’t really know whether Alice was guilty or not.
‘Can you help me?’ Toby said. ‘I need to get the police to release her.’
‘Help you how?’
‘By telling me what happened on the submarine.’
Lars shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Toby. That’s Bill’s call. He’s right; it’s still Classified. And he’s also right that it has no relevance.’
‘It must have some relevance! Or at least the police must think it has. If it truly isn’t important, we need to explain to them why.’
‘Leave it to Bill, Toby. Leave it to Bill.’
They walked all the way to the waves, dodging grey strips of shallow seawater lurking in the sand. It took less time than Toby had expected: the waves turned out to be no more than six inches high, tickling the beach.
Lars realized what was happening first.
‘That tide’s coming in fast!’
They reversed direction and headed back towards the dunes, the water lapping on their heels. Toby scanned the beach ahead of them: the tide was swooping around them in a flanking movement. They ended up running to a point where the beach inclined slightly upwards, slowing the incoming sea.
Lars turned to watch the water close over the patch of sand on which they had been walking only a few minutes before. ‘Now that doesn’t happen on Lake Michigan.’
Twenty-Three
Alice didn’t really like Lisa Beckwith. Worse, she didn’t trust her.
As a corporate lawyer, she was ignorant of her criminal brethren. Corporate law, at least as Alice’s firm practised it, involved big deals, big brains and big fees. In particular it involved large piles of paper, virtual paper leafed through in electronic form on tablets or computers. She assumed most of the time criminal law involved lesser cases, lesser brains, lesser fees. Many corporate lawyers assumed that a criminal lawyer’s job was to guide guilty felons through a chaotic and overstretched legal process. Difficult, frustrating, but small time.
But Alice also knew that murder trials were big deals in themselves, that not everyone accused of a crime was guilty of it, and in certain cases considerable ingenuity and knowledge of the law was required to get an innocent accused off the hook. Or a guilty one for that matter.
Lisa Beckwith was small and dark and had the worn face of a woman who had seen it all before. But her eyes were intelligent and alive and Alice could tell at once she was engaged. She wanted this case, and she wanted to get Alice off.
Which was all to the good.
Despite the lack of trust, which Alice was pretty sure was reflected by Lisa, the two lawyers had quickly developed something of a rapport, or at least a modus operandi. Overnight Alice had worried about how she could withhold information from her solicitor without actually lying to her, or undermining her innocence. But Lisa made it easy. She knew exactly what questions to ask and, more importantly what questions not to ask. Her goal was not to prove Alice’s innocence, but to thwart the police’s attempts to prove her guilt. And she was optimistic.
It wasn’t surprising that the police had arrested Alice. She was the last person to see Sam alive and she had hidden the fact she had gone to meet him at the pub from her family.
But Lisa believed the police would need more than that to charge her. Forensics were not helping them. Alice’s fingerprints were present in Sam’s bedroom. But the police hadn’t found a murder weapon. And, most significantly, they hadn’t found any of Sam’s blood on the clothes Alice was wearing that night. There was quite a lot of blood on Sam and on the floor of his bedroom. Lisa would argue that there should be quite a lot of blood on Sam’s murderer. Who therefore could not be Alice.
The police were also struggling with motive. They had no real idea why Alice might have killed Sam. They had guesses but, according to Lisa, the less they knew, the less they could guess. One such theory was that Alice and Sam knew each other already, which was ridiculous. Another was that there was something suspicious about Craig Naylor’s death on the submarine. If the police were on the wrong track, Lisa urged Alice to leave them there, wasting time.
The implication was that if they were on the right track, Alice should leave them there too.
Lisa insisted that Alice tell the police the bare minimum, a strategy that Alice was happy to follow. It made the interviews with the police easier, once she had got over the awkwardness of refusing to answer their perfectly reasonable questions. It meant she didn’t have to worry about keeping her story straight, about avoiding lies.
She could do this.
But after hours of questioning both by the police and by her own solicitor, she was tired and it was a relief to be allowed back into her police cell. And to have time alone to think.
She thought of Toby. He would be worried about her, she knew that. He would be figuring out ways to help her.
But would he believe in her innocence?
Of course, he would deny that he suspected her. He would claim that he didn’t believe a word of the police’s suspicions, that he was certain it was all some terrible mistake.
But would he doubt her? And if he did doubt her, would he abandon her?
If Toby abandoned her, it would all be over. She would crumble inside. And outside.
She couldn’t believe Toby would abandon her. She couldn’t allow herself to believe that.
She thought about her mother and her father and how she always seemed to be looking after them both. Even though her mother was dead seven years. Even though her father seemed competent and solidly reliable. More than that: businessmen paid Bill Guth good money to fix things, and he fixed them.
Alice remembered the night about a month after her mother’s death and a week before she was due to return to the States to take her bar exam. Her father had been devastated, but he seemed to be handling it well; with help from Alice.
Bill had spent the day in Paris on business. Maya was seventeen, still at school and living at home at the Kensington flat. She had asked Alice to join her at a party, as long as Alice promised to leave early. Which she had done: having a procession of young English eighteen-year-olds hitting on her was just embarrassing. She was old enough to be their elder sister, for God’s sakes!
Maya was having fun, though, when Alice left.
Alice had arrived home at about ten to find her father in the living room working his way through a bottle of Templeton rye whiskey, and listening to the Eurythmics. Alice knew the bottle ha
d been nearly full that morning; now it was two-thirds empty.
‘How are you, Alice?’ Bill asked from his slumped position on the sofa. He was careful not to slur his words. Very careful.
Alice told him briefly about the party that Maya had invited her to, and he nodded in slightly the wrong places.
Alice had seen her dad slightly drunk once or twice. But never like this.
But if his seventeen-year-old daughter was allowed to get drunk, why shouldn’t he?
She was about to withdraw and put herself to bed, when she hesitated. This was wrong.
‘What happened in Paris, Dad?’
‘Oh, nothing,’ Bill said. ‘My meeting only took an hour, so I had most of the afternoon to kill. I wandered around. Sat in a cafe with a glass of wine. Caught the flight home.’
‘What happened, Dad?’ said Alice, sitting next to him.
Bill put down his glass of whiskey and closed his eyes. Then he opened them and looked straight at Alice. ‘I thought I saw her,’ he said. ‘In the Jardin du Luxembourg. There was this woman with long honey-coloured hair talking to an older lady. I couldn’t see her face, but from the back she looked just like Donna. Not Donna now, but Donna when we were young. When we listened to this,’ he waved vaguely towards the speaker.
‘I called out to her – “Donna!”. I knew when I was doing it it was stupid, but I couldn’t help it. Just in case. It wasn’t her, of course. But it stabbed me. Right here.’ He jabbed his chest. ‘I hadn’t thought of her all day; it must have been the first day since she died I haven’t thought of her. And then I did. And I couldn’t stop thinking about her, how I would never see her again.’ A tear ran down his cheek, then another. For a few seconds he fought it, and then he began to sob.
‘Sorry, Alice. I’m sorry. It must be the whiskey.’
‘It’s OK, Dad. It’s OK. Really. We all cry all the time. Why shouldn’t you?’
Alice reached out and squeezed his hand. She hadn’t yet gone a day without thinking about her mother. She couldn’t imagine ever doing that.
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