Evil Turn (Nathan Hawk Mystery) (9 page)

As we approached the house I could see the lights were still on, silhouettes were moving behind curtains, people were still up. Why that should have bothered me I’m not sure. I’d have been equally concerned had the place been in total darkness. It was all to do with not being in charge, Fee said when I put it to her, a long-held belief that other people were incapable of doing their jobs, especially without my leadership.

Fairchild was in the kitchen making camomile tea for bed, and clearly she wished she’d come to the pub with us since watching a chess match has never been much of a way to pass an evening. I was glad she’d stayed at home and spared me the embarrassment of John Demise drooling over her. I decided to save my questions about the parcel she’d sent till the following morning. The jog.

Through in the living room Kinsella was giving an elaborate display of defeat, gracious enough in tone, but still very much a performance. He was on his feet, circling the chess board, occasionally clutching his head with both hands as if he would tear it from his shoulders and bowl it across the room.

“This is one hell of a clever lady, Mr Hawk!” he said as I entered. “Three games we’ve had, three times she’s wiped the floor with me!”

The lady herself was far too modest to crow about her success and was busy packing away the pieces as he spoke, but at least Bill Grogan shared the delight that was duly hers. He was smiling, not something he did easily, covering more vocal delight with a round of stretches and yawns, indicating his readiness to turn in. He may not have found the three matches as lively as their equivalent in rugby league terms, but the results were far more rewarding.

Once he and Kinsella had gone upstairs I found myself refereeing a different kind of match, an undeclared stand-off between Fee and Laura. I can’t say I hadn’t been aware of it up until then, but in the time I’d known Laura the need to confront it had never arisen. The previous Christmas, for example, she’d spent every night at her own house due to weight of numbers in mine; the summer before in Los Angeles, we’d all stayed in the Beverly Wilshire, and hotels are different with a social structure all of their own. However, from Fee’s point of view, when the woman who has taken your mother’s place moves into your father’s bedroom something Freudian happens between the three of you and can’t be ignored. So, as Laura began to gather up the debris of her visit prior to going back to Plum Tree Cottage, I said, “Laura, we’ve both got a heavy day tomorrow; why don’t you go on upstairs? Fee and I’ll finish the kitchen.”

She glanced at Fee. “Well, if you’re sure you don’t...”

“I’ll be five minutes.”

Laura swept her stuff into a sort of carpet bag she’d grown fond of, pecked Fee on the cheek and headed upstairs.

“Did you have to make her feel so uncomfortable?” Fee hissed.

“Pardon?”

She stepped in close, the better to get in my face while keeping her voice low. “We all know what’s going on here, Dad. You’re having an affair with a middle-aged woman...”

“It is not an affair, it’s a relationship.”

She found the correction pedantic and trifling. “Alright, you’re having a relationship with a very smart lady and all of a sudden your oldest daughter pops up. Well, I’m sorry, it can’t be easy for her.”

“Please don’t apologise...”

“And it certainly isn’t easy for me!”

It was difficult to know how to put the brakes on this one and I had a nasty feeling it was about to veer out of control. The best course was to keep listening.

“Thing is, Dad, when Mum died I went into action, but once things settled down I realised that my best friend and confidante had just ... upped and left me to cope with you lot. In a way I blamed her but you’re right, I had no one I could count on for unconditional love. I mean you, yes, but...”

Oh, good, I thought. Fee spotted my self-pity immediately.

“Don’t hang your head, Dad! Of course I could come to you. I mean I hope you’ll always be – well, I’m sure you will...”

I don’t think either of us knew what she intended to say next.

“I wasn’t hanging it,” I said. “But there is something I’ve neglected; kept trying to find the right moment for nine years. I never thanked you for taking over. So ... thank you.”

She looked at me until I wondered if again I’d said something pedantic and trifling. And then, without the slightest warning, her eyes filled up and she broke down in silent floods of tears.

It took half an hour or so to get Fee back on course again and she made most of the running herself, not because I’m useless when it comes to tears, but because she can’t stand being seen as vulnerable.

We’d adjourned to the kitchen and sat at the corner of the table, pushing whatever needed clearing away to one side. She spent the next twenty minutes saying she didn’t know what had come over her, blaming jet lag, the wine she’d drunk at
The Crown
, advancing years, all thirty of them come June. I spent most of the time not saying that she’d just broken up with a man she loved, which, even if voiced, wouldn’t have been the whole story. With a deep breath and a slap of the table, she finally became her old self again and told me not to fuss, and certainly not to tell Laura. It would only make her feel worse and I’d caused her enough embarrassment that evening already.

When I eased open the bedroom door I’d expected the room to be in darkness and Laura to be sound asleep in her side of the bed. Instead she was wide awake, leaning back on upended pillows, reading from her tablet. She smiled, cautiously. “Is Fee okay?”

“You heard?”

“No, but I have a good imagination. Yukito?”

I sat down on the edge of the bed and reached out to her. “Yukito and other things. She misses her mother. We never gave her the chance to grieve properly, The Others and me, we just set her to work taking Maggie’s place.”

“That can be dealt with,” she said.

I nodded. “But at least you made Bill Grogan’s day.”

She folded over the cover of her tablet and switched off the power, then considered what she was about to say. It was a developing habit, taking her listener to the brink of new information, then pausing to ensure their full attention.

“I didn’t win,” she said, eventually. “He allowed me to win.”

“He was scared of what Grogan might do to him otherwise?”

“Either that, or he was being gallant.”

“Gallant? It was only chess, Laura. It wasn’t a sinking ship or even a door that needed opening. It was a game.”

“Yes, but one that requires considerable mental abilities.”

She thought for a moment, deciding if what she was about to say next would irritate or pacify me.

“He wanted to do medicine, you know. Science A-levels at school, four grade As, but his parents couldn’t afford to send him to medical school.”

“Which one?”

“I didn’t ask.”

No names, no pack drill: he was a dab hand at not giving much away. Gallant he might be, but he was still filthy, ragged, smelly and proud of it. When she saw the sceptical look on my face, Laura came gently to Kinsella’s defence.

“It does happen, you know. People fall by the wayside. And that is shameful.”

She launched into the case against an education system that still denies the best brains an opportunity to contribute. His home life had been truly dreadful, by the sound of it, with him needing to work even when he was at school.

“If he was working, how come he got good A-levels?”

“That’s what’s so remarkable, but is it any wonder that he fell into bad company?”

I smiled as best I could. “What’s remarkable to me, Laura, is that you believe his bullshit.”

She folded her reading glasses with unnecessary care and laid them on the bedside table. “I’m sure you meant to include the phrase ‘with all due respect’ somewhere in that sentence,” she said quietly.

“With all due respect, I’m afraid I didn’t.”

We’d been asked to assemble under the big beech tree at 7.30 next morning, all of us except Laura, who cycled off to the surgery on the pretext of getting some paperwork done. We’d had a sort of breakfast an hour earlier, bran flakes and coffee, just after Fee woke the entire household with a ship’s bell application she’d downloaded to her phone.

Jaikie’s old trainers and tracksuit fitted Kinsella like gloves, and as I went out to join the others he was already jogging on the spot and stretching out as if murder trials were something that happened in other worlds, nothing to do with him, the main witness on whom the case depended. Fairchild offered him an elasticated tie for his hair and when he accepted it she took courage in both hands and put it on for him. She was looking pretty good. Pink, head to toe: zipper top, leggings, running shoes, sweatband round her forehead, all of it very budget, but showing off the face and figure which had so appealed to John Demise in the queue at Stone Post Office. Bill Grogan looked as grim as the reaper himself but at least he was wearing a side-arm under the grotty old tracksuit top. He engaged me in one of the longest conversations we’d ever had.

“Guvnor, d’you have a length of rope I can use?”

“You gonna hang yourself, Bill?”

“I’m not what you call a natural runner. I’ve a feeling this bastard is. Leastways, he’s got a few years over me. I’m going to tie him to me.”

“Have me pull you along?” said Kinsella, feigning outrage.

Grogan turned to him, opened his tracksuit top to reveal the Glock. “Make a break for it, son, this time I will fucking shoot you.”

Fee waded in immediately. Wasn’t it time we started trusting each other? Firearms notwithstanding, how on earth could Grogan or Kinsella run if shackled to each other? And suppose we passed anyone we knew, someone in the village: what would they make of it? Grogan just looked at her and held his tongue. I went off to the shed and found a length of rope.

We set off soon afterwards, on a five-mile loop of the Aylesbury Ring which for the first mile took us down across Martin Falconer’s land, well away from the prying eyes of neighbours, and it was indeed a beautiful morning to be out and about. By the time we reached the bridge over the Thame at Lower Winchendon, with the prospect of a steep incline ahead of us, the runners had been sorted from the plodders. The fact that Grogan was lagging behind came as no surprise, any more than Kinsella’s false bonhomie did as he ran beside him with absolute ease, making play of the umbilical cord between them. Fairchild had struck out, long legs and youth on her side, and soon gained a distance of half a mile or so. Fee ran back and forth between the two camps, like the proverbial PE teacher giving praise to front runners, spurring on those bringing up the rear.

I put on a spurt and caught up with Fairchild, unable to speak fluently for a minute but eventually finding a style that suited the pace she was setting.

“Friend of mine ... took a real fancy to you ... the other day.”

She turned and smiled. It was the nicest thing I’d said to her since we’d met.

“Guy you met in Stone Post Office ... posting a parcel ... to Grimsby.”

She’d had a feeling the niceness wouldn’t last and tried to handle its passing with silence. I was getting some of my breath back.

“Who lives in Grimsby, Petra?”

“I think that’s my business,” she said, softly.

“I disagree. Too much of a coincidence to actually be one. These trawlermen were murdered there, now you send a birthday present to the same town? You can tell me or you can tell Grogan.”

Her face hardened. “Who the hell do you think you are?”

We’d reached the ridge and normally the view ahead, down into the valley overlooking the Pollicots and Chilton, would make anyone pause and relish it, to say nothing of getting their breath back, but Fairchild used the descent to try and outrun me. I called after her, turning so that Grogan, even though he was way behind, might hear as well.

“Who lives in Grimsby that you don’t want us to know about?”

She stopped dead and I waited for her to re-join me, which she did at walking pace.

“I was posting a parcel for Liam Kinsella.”

“You bloody what?”

She stood facing me, arms folded. “Where does it say in any briefing I’ve had that I can’t do the guy a common or garden favour?”

No wonder Fee hadn’t sussed her out yet. She was too full of surprises.

“Nowhere. It shouldn’t need to.”

“Then please enlighten me as to why posting a parcel for him has got your knickers in a twist? Or was that the uphill jog?”

Grogan, Kinsella and Fee were still far enough away not to overhear our discussion.

“This man is testing you, me, Bill Grogan, my daughter, Doctor Peterson, to see how far he can push us.”

“And why’s he doing that?” she asked with a roll of her head.

“Drop the attitude, Fairchild, you might learn something. I don’t know what he’s up to, but if you start doing odd jobs for him, God knows where it’ll...”

“You sound just like Bill Grogan and a hundred other old coppers I’ve met. No logic to any of your prejudice, just fixed ideas about some poor kid caught up in the justice system...”

“Forget the hundred others,” I hissed. “Just listen to me, you stupid...”

For some reason I broke off. I like to think that her being a woman had something to do with that.

“Please, don’t hold back,” she taunted. “Forget the pink, see blue.”

I took her up on that but stepped back a pace to emphasise the danger she might otherwise have been in.

“If you were a member of my squad I’d probably have grabbed your head by now and slammed it down on the nearest hard surface...”

“Charming.”

“I’d have said, ‘You stupid bastard, are you blind or just thick?’ Kinsella is a man with a plan. Don’t ask me what it is yet...”

She shrugged, as if I’d proved her point about fixed ideas.

“...but don’t kid yourself he’s had a moral awakening, all to do with heroin. He tried to escape the other day and as the trial gets nearer he’ll try again. Just make sure you’re not standing in his way when it happens. What was in the parcel?”

“A silk scarf.”

“You bought that for him?”

“Yes! From a shop in Thame. Ten quid.”

“Wrapping paper? Card?”

“From the newsagent next door.”

“Then you brought it all home, snuck it in past Grogan, got Kinsella to sign it, went out again and posted it? I’d say this was more than a favour; I’d say this was busy.”

She sighed irritably and looked away, hopefully in the first stages of realising that maybe I had a point.

“Who was it to?”

“A woman called Emma Jago. An old friend.”

“Miss? Mrs? Doctor? Baroness?”

“Just Emma.”

Fee was calling from a hundred yards behind and below us. “You two alright?”

“Address?”

“
The Amethyst
, Grimsby. I even remember the sodding postcode. In fact I doubt I’ll ever forget it now! DN31 7SY.”

“What did the card say?”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake!” She squared up to me again. “It said ‘Happy Birthday, Emma’. What are you going to read into that?”

“The fact that he’s got you jumping like a Mexican bean. And why the hell I’m covering for you, God knows, but do anything like this again, I tell Grogan, I tell Blackwell.”

She nodded and I called back to Fee. “We’re okay, just wondering whether to go back or go on.”

I received the expected reply. “Onward, onward!”