Murder Comes Calling (15 page)

twenty-two

The black Jaguar sedan,
maintaining an inconspicuous distance, exited the motorway and turned, and then slowed down and sped up whenever Rex did. Perhaps he was being paranoid, he thought, even as he reflected how the shiny front grille badge had taken on a sinister aspect in his rear view mirror. He called Malcolm on both his home number and mobile, and receiving no answer, left brief messages urging him to get back to him as soon as possible.

By the time he reached Notting Hamlet by a deliberately circuitous route along lonely country lanes, he felt reasonably certain he had shed his tail. He even began to doubt there had been one in the first place and was already laughing to himself in anticipation of sharing his experience with Malcolm as he walked in the front door. He called out for his friend. No answer.

Failing to locate him in the kitchen, he went through to the garage and saw his car was there. He peeked into the living room and then went to the study, where Malcolm would have been working on his application. He found the desk strewn with periodicals and papers, a tea mug knocked over, and the contents spilt on a document. Rex ran upstairs and searched all the rooms. Where was he?

The last thing Malcolm had said on the phone, as Rex recalled, was that he needed to answer the door. The implication of that in light of the murders in Notting Hamlet filled him with panic and dread.

Frantically, he checked the yard. No gardening tools lay about, nothing to suggest his friend had been there that morning. What would account for his car being in the garage and for his leaving the front door unlocked in his absence? Why hadn’t Malcolm called him back?

As Rex returned to the kitchen from outside, his eyes adjusting to the gloom after the broad daylight, a movement to his right by the laundry room door caught his eye.

“Oh, there you are.” But even as he said it, he realized the man in the cheap jeans and lime green nylon jacket was not Malcolm. Rex stopped mid-stride, his body instinctively rigid with fear. Metal glinted in the intruder’s hand. Of similar height to Malcolm, and likewise grey-haired, he was more flaccid in build. As the man’s features crystallized, they assumed a faint familiarity, but Rex at that moment could not place them. “Who are you and what are you doing here?” he demanded in a hoarse voice.

“I’d ask you the same, ’cept I already know.” The man’s voice had a flat, nasal quality.

“I’m a guest in this house,” Rex responded. “Which you, patently, are not. Where’s the owner? What have you done with him?”

The man glanced down at his butcher’s knife. Rex felt the bile rise in his throat, but found he could not move his muscles. He had a vision of Malcolm’s body crumpled under the stairs. His paralysis dissipated. Involuntarily, he looked towards the hall. The man sprang, cornering him between the back door and kitchen counter. Escape was impossible. The armed man would be on top of him before he could get out the door. Though shorter, he was more agile. A grim expression haunted the pale eyes. Rex had seen that wary, soulless expression enough times to know the man had spent time in prison. The pallid skin deprived of adequate sun and fresh air confirmed his impression. And now Rex knew who was standing before him wielding the knife, and yet was at a loss to understand why.

“You’re Darrell Cruikshank.” The man had only been out of prison a month, as Rex had confirmed from a call to Belmarsh; barely enough time to acclimatize to the twenty-first century after two decades of incarceration.

“Oh, you definitely need to go, Mr. Graves,” the ex-con said in a grating voice. His thin lips curled around chipped, nicotine-stained teeth. “You know far too much for your own good.”

He approached in a smooth movement, his sneakers squeaking on the linoleum floor. His knife pointed to a chair at the kitchen table. “Sit here and give us your phone.”

Seeing no option, Rex relinquished it and sat down, his back to the kitchen door and to the man, whose body at close quarters gave off a sour aroma of sweat. He heard the door lock behind him. He made an effort to control his breathing and clear his brain as he tried to ascertain the significance of Kev and Frankie’s nephew ambushing him in Malcolm’s home.

“Why are you threatening me, Mr. Cruikshank? And why did you have to do away with Malcolm Patterson? I came to Notting Hamlet to help discover who murdered your family.”

“You had no business sticking your nose in.”

“I wanted to seek justice for the four victims. The fact that I now know who they really were hasn’t changed anything. As far as I’m aware, they lived the last twenty years as law-abiding citizens.”

“Free.”

“Excuse me?”

“Free. While I wasted twenty of my best years inside. I’m fifty-seven now, used up and out of touch. It’s like I landed on another planet. Nothing feels the same. Even the people are different.”

“It must be hard on you that your family’s gone.”

“What you talking about? My uncles and cousin never came to visit me in the joint, not once.”

“They were supposed to be in Australia.”

“Not even a card. Uncle Kev got away with murder, including the hit on Ivan’s family, and Fred received a light sentence for smashing a bottle in somebody’s face, while I got twenty for white collar crime. Different lawyer, see. Kev and Barry could have hauled Wiggins’s arse back from his holiday villa in Ibiza, but I s’ppose I wasn’t worth the trouble. I was expendable.” Darrell split the word into four distinct syllables. “Well, I showed them. The chloroform made Kev a bit woozy, but he knew what I was planning to do with that piano wire. Pure terror in his voice when he said, ‘Dar, you wouldn’t do this to your old uncle, would ya?’ Too right, I would. I did what I dreamt of every night for two decades.”

Rex found himself temporarily speechless. “It was you?” he uttered at last. This man was not on his side, at all.

“You never figured that out?” goaded the voice in his ear. “I thought you were some big-name private detective.”

“I failed to see a motive.”

“Motive!” the man sneered. “They left me to rot behind bars all those years. How ’bout that for motive? I never squealed on them even though it would have meant a lesser sentence. They owed me so much more than half a mil. That’s nothing today, and I been inside too long to start over.” He spoke with cold fury. “That’s not all, neither.” The man spat on Malcolm’s clean floor and paused. Rex felt sure Cruikshank would use the blade on him then. “Soon as they sold their homes, I knew I’d never find them again, or my dough.”

“I thought a young Russian couple was responsible for the four murders,” Rex said in an effort to prolong the conversation and his life.

“Igor and Svetlana? Nah, they were just casing the community. They’re Ivan’s youngest son and daughter. I did the dirty work in exchange for securing my future.”

“So you defected to the Russians?”

“I wouldn’t put it quite like that, Rex, me old pal. Anyway, they signalled you’d be here. Where’s your briefcase?”

“In the hall.” Rex hoped Cruikshank would be stupid enough to fetch it, giving him an opportunity to escape through the kitchen door.

“It can stay there till they arrive.”

“Who?” Rex asked.

“The people who followed you on the motorway. Ivan and his driver. You shouldn’t have gone to Luton, Rex. The editor at Penworth Press will meet with an unfortunate accident when he drives home from work.”

“I suppose you had plenty of practice with those ice cream vans.”

“I see you’ve been doing your homework.” Cruikshank clapped slowly.

Rex twisted his head round far enough to see that the man had his thumb hooked around the knife handle. “Why don’t you just finish me off right now,” he said with bravado, “instead of making me sit here.”

“We’re waiting on the Czar.” Rex detected agitation in Cruikshank’s voice. “It’s so quiet here. I’ll never get used to the quiet after where I been.”

“Your friends should be here by now,” Rex remarked a moment later. “Unless they got lost, or else hit a pothole. The roads around here are so badly signed and maintained it’s a good possibility.”

“I didn’t ask your opinion, so just shut up, okay?”

In the ensuing silence, punctuated only by the ticking of the kitchen clock, Rex wondered about John Calpin. Had Darrell Cruikshank done away with him, too? Had he heard about his research on his family and travelled halfway across the country to locate his mark in Glasgow? Calpin had been a child when Darrell was put away, so it couldn’t have been a grudge killing.

From behind him, Rex heard Cruikshank call a number on his phone. “The other man, Malcolm Patterson, is not here,” he stated.

“I don’t know where is other man,” the heavy Russian accent of an older male answered through the phone. “Find him.” More words were spoken that Rex could not catch, but he felt weak with relief to hear Malcolm had not come to harm, at least not at the hands of the nephew or Ivan. Darrell Cruikshank confirmed something to the Russian and ended the call. “You were right,” he told Rex. “Car trouble. I always knew Jags were unreliable, but they’re on their way. Never fear.” He laughed unpleasantly.

“Answer me one thing,” Rex said. “How did you get into your uncles’ homes? They were sticklers for security and there was no sign of forced entry.”

“They knew I was getting out and were expecting me any day. I’d sent word. They opened their door to me and faked a big welcome. Except Fred, who was taking his midday bath. When he didn’t answer the bell, I climbed up a drainpipe to an open window round the back. He was a sitting duck! They’d got wind the Russians might be on to them. I showed more mercy than Ivan’s gang would’ve. You heard what they did to the journalist?” The man snorted. “Just wait till you see what they’ll do to you.”

Rex’s stomach performed a slow and sickening roll. He needed no convincing that Ivan the Terrible had earned his name if he had orchestrated John Calpin’s death. Cruikshank spoke again.

“Ivan makes my lot look like fairy godmothers. All the same, I’m glad his cronies got to Calpin and his computer. I don’t need any more family skeletons exposed and me going back inside.”

“I suppose Ivan made you kill your old associates.”

“It was an initiation, see? To prove myself.”

Much as Rex appreciated getting answers as to who’d killed whom, it was cold comfort if he had to take the information with him to the grave. And what of Malcolm? With any luck, the Russians would turn up before he got home—if Ivan’s son had not already taken him.

“And how long has your outfit been spying on me?”

“Long enough.” Cruikshank came round to the table and leant against it, facing Rex, the knife held towards his hostage’s throat. “We have an informant here keeping an eye on things.”

“And who might that be?”

Cruikshank gave a sinister smirk. “You ask far too many questions, Mr. Graves. You know what happens to people who snoop.” He touched the tip of the knife to Rex’s lips. Rex’s mouth went dry. “Like I said, you should’ve left well alone. Ivan Dragunov is extremely thorough in his elimination of people he don’t trust.”

Cold fear rippled down Rex’s spine. He was planning to leap up and risk trying to overpower Cruikshank when he heard the faint but unmistakable sound of police sirens approaching.

Cruikshank tensed, his face hardened. “How can I get out of here?” He stuck the knifepoint into Rex’s throat. “Tell me!”

“Try the river behind the house,” Rex gasped. Desperate to be rid of the man, he added, “Beyond by the green is a path to a farm, which will take you to a road on the far side.”

Cruickshank wrung open the back door and bolted into the garden. Rex touched his neck and felt blood. He snatched up a napkin from the table and ran through the house to the front door. He tore down the driveway and waved down the two patrol cars entering the cul-de-sac.

“I just had a man detain me at knife point,” he told the first officer to descend from his vehicle. “He ran that way, towards the farm on the far side of the river.” He pointed the uniformed policemen in the direction. “He’s responsible for the four murders here in Notting Hamlet. He works for the MIR gang.” Rex realized the first officer was regarding him with some scepticism.

“And you are?”

“Rex Graves, QC.” He handed over his card, anxiously gazing in the direction Cruikshank had taken off in, just moments before.

The officer waved the other three uniformed men toward the river, yelling after them, “Suspect is on foot, armed with a knife. Be quick about it, lads.”

“They’d better be quick,” Rex told him. “A pair of German shepherds will likely maul him to bits if the farmer doesn’t shoot him first.” At least the boy, Alex, would still be at school and out of danger if Cruikshank managed to evade both the dogs and the shotgun.

“I’ll dispatch a unit to Country Farm Road to cut him off, if he gets that far.” The officer issued directions into his shoulder mic.

“The gangland boss is due here any moment with his bodyguard-chauffeur. They followed me from Luton in a black Jaguar, but it was too far away for me to get the number plate.” After sitting at the kitchen table for what had seemed like an eternity, everything now appeared to be happening very fast. He felt light-headed.

“Are you all right, sir?” the officer asked, looking at Rex’s hand holding the napkin to his throat.

“It’s just a nick.”

“Best get it seen to, all the same.”

“My friend Malcolm Patterson, the owner of the house, is missing. We need to find him.”

“We have your friend at the station.”

“You do?” Rex supposed that was good news, at least better than the fate his imagination had concocted for Malcolm.

“He’s in a bit of bother. Perhaps you can come and help clarify a couple of things.”

At that moment, a man emerged from behind the house and waved. “And this must be the individual who rescued you from a potentially fatal situation,” the officer said. Rex must have shown his confusion. “He called in the incident,” the policeman explained.

The person in question approached with a swagger in his step. “Randall Gomez of Owl Lane, owner of Good-as-New Home Maintenance,” he announced to the officer. “I hid in the shed until I was sure the coast was clear. Dangerous-looking bloke, yeah?” he said, addressing Rex. “Sorry I left you to fend for yourself. I thought if I burst in the kitchen, he might attack you right off. One stab and you’d’ve been a goner, mate. So I decided to wait for the cavalry.”