Resolutions (23 page)

Tim almost howled with laughter. ‘Just as well she's only seen Marvello,' he said, thinking about his now-deceased other persona as children's entertainer, the Great Stupendo. ‘Really, Joy, I made the most appalling clown. There's George,' he added, spotting the sandy hair, Ursula's blonde ponytail visible just behind. ‘Hey, George. Ursula. Over here.'

George turned, a look of concern on his face. He came running over. ‘What's wrong?' he demanded. ‘Is Rina all right? Is Mac?'

‘Hello, Joy,' Ursula said. ‘Have they caught Thomas Peel yet? It said on the news he'd been shooting at people.'

It must seem almost exciting when you're fourteen
, Tim thought, suddenly feeling very old and worldly wise, and then reminding himself that, compared to George and Ursula, he had very little to feel worldly about. They'd been through more in their short lives than he ever had. He noted that both avoided mention of Karen and wished he could do the same.

‘Peel's dead,' he announced, childishly gratified when they both stopped and stared at him.

‘Trouble is,' Joy added, ‘the police seem convinced that Mac did it.'

Twenty minutes of walking and waiting for the minibus, twenty minutes to exchange so much news. Tim wanted to tell George about the knife block, knowing he and Ursula would love the adventure of it, but he resisted; better that fewer people knew any of it. Twenty minutes of getting George to recall everything Karen had said, anything that may give a clue to where she had been and how to track her down. Tim felt guilt, as though inviting George to betray his sister, but found that George had moved beyond that and that the recounting of ‘Karen' conversations was the easy part. He had now talked it all through with Ursula so many times that it felt almost like it was someone else's story.

By the time the minibus arrived, George had explained about the house and the gallery and the old lady selling up, and the fact that it was on the promenade somewhere and there would be a lot of passing trade. He had described the house and its tiny front garden, its formal, imposing door and sash windows and every single thing he could think of.

‘Did she want a gallery before?' Joy asked curiously. ‘I mean, was she into art?'

George thought about it. ‘She liked pictures,' he said. ‘She used to draw cartoons for me to cheer me up, but she said there was no money in drawing; she had to get a proper education and a real job.' He frowned, as though remembering something awkward or remote. ‘The house,' he said. ‘It reminded me . . . you know when little kids draw a house and it's always got a door in the middle and four windows and a chimney on top?'

‘Yeah,' Joy said. ‘Like when they draw the sun with rays so it looks like a spider.'

‘Well, I always drew houses like that, and Karen said one day we'd find a house like that and live in it. The house she showed me, like I said, sort of Georgian but not quite.' He shrugged. ‘There are a lot of houses like that. Probably a lot of galleries too. It could be anywhere, couldn't it?'

Privately, Tim thought so too, but he tried to sound encouraging. ‘We'll find it,' he said. ‘We've got Abe and Fitch and Rina.'

He saw George nod and try to smile, but Ursula voiced what he really felt.

‘Up against whose army?' she said.

TWENTY-EIGHT

A
t three fifteen in Pinsent, conversation had run out and Calum and Emily decided they had better leave. They'd been at a safe house while Emily's father still posed a threat; now they wanted to get back to something like normal and were wondering how and what and where. To go back to their little rented house seemed untenable; for one thing it was still a crime scene, cordoned off and under guard. For another, there was no longer a front door and the hall was peppered with shotgun pellets, splintered wood and plaster from when Thomas Peel had twice discharged the weapon. Calum now understood that it had only been because Peel had had to reload that he and Emily and Frankie had had those precious seconds in which to get away. Had Peel been armed with anything better than a shotgun, he was convinced their families would now be arranging funerals.

Meantime, they thought they'd go and stay with Calum's parents for a few days and consider their options. The idea of being somewhere under police protection was an uncomfortable one: a reminder of the past that both were eager to put behind them. Too eager, Rina thought. Fail to face up to what had happened now and it would surface with even greater intensity at a later, maybe less convenient moment, but she could appreciate their point of view.

Her other worry was that all of this might not be over. What if Karen had taken an interest in the young couple? What if Peel had associates who might want revenge?

Maybe she just worried too much. She wanted to talk this over with Tim, but a long discussion over the phone was not the same as a face-to-face conflab.

After Emily and Calum took their leave, Rina sat, thoughtful, while Fitch paced a room too small for meaningful pacing. Miriam sat at the little table in the corner of the room, head resting on her arms, trying hard not to doze. Sleep was what she really craved, but it seemed inappropriate and unfeeling, knowing Mac was still . . . wherever he was.

Give her action any time
, Rina thought. Forced inactivity was something she just did not do well.

At half past three the door opened. Alec came in and motioned them to come out into the reception area. Rina bristled, thinking they were about to be thrown out or fobbed off with excuses, but Miriam was looking past her and jumped to her feet. ‘Mac!'

She ran past Rina and grabbed at him, holding fast to the lapels of his jacket, pressing her face against his chest. He held her tightly, blinking as though he'd been in half-light for too long.

‘Are you all right?' Rina asked.

‘Suspended pending enquiries,' he said. He was pale and exhausted, dark circles under puffy eyes, and Rina would have sworn he looked thinner than the last time she had seen him. Smaller too, somehow diminished; even his skin looked grey and dull, as though he'd faded over the past few days.

‘Take us home, Fitch,' Rina said. ‘I think I've seen enough of this place.'

TWENTY-NINE

A
fter Fitch had driven them back to Frantham, Mac and Miriam walked back along the wooden causeway to the boathouse, Mac half afraid of what he might find there and Miriam too tired to care. She had still worn the blue plastic crime-scene slippers, and Joy insisted on lending her a pair of shoes. Miriam had waited in the Range Rover while she fetched them, unable to face the exuberant welcome home she would have to accept from the Peters sisters and the Montmorencys; not wanting to hurt their feelings by rebuffing them.

They had spoken to DI Kendal on their way home, asked if it was OK to return. Dave Kendal was sympathetic and had been a little put out at being asked to conduct the search of his friend's house. He told Mac that he had supervised things himself, kept it all low-key, and that Mac's home was now available to him once more. The neighbours would probably not have noticed anything untoward. Mac thought that was an unduly optimistic hope, born of Dave Kendal's unfamiliarity with Frantham Old Town.

‘What were you looking for?' Mac had asked.

‘Your laptop, for one thing. Andy brought me that, says you hardly ever take it home anyway. And kitchen knives,' Kendal said. ‘Wildman wanted us to look for a specific type, but all we found were the two old ones you keep in the drawer. I've had to take them, so I hope you don't want to chop anything tonight.'

Mac thanked him, noting that Miriam was avoiding his gaze and Rina suddenly showing great interest in the view from the side window, despite the fact it was now too dark to see a whole lot.

He said nothing until they reached Frantham Old Town and the familiar shape loomed out of the shadows at the top of the old slipway.

Mac let them in, switching on lights, looking round to see what Kendal's people had disturbed. It was such a minimal space, Mac thought, they'd have been in and out in less than half an hour, surely. It still felt intrusive and unpleasant, though, knowing that someone had rifled through his things and examined his personal possessions, maybe discussed his taste in music or his lack of a big-screen television or . . . Impatiently, he shoved such random thoughts aside, watched as Miriam paced the perimeter of the living room, as though establishing her territory, and then went through to the bedroom and stripped the sheets from the bed.

‘What are you doing?'

‘Changing the sheets, doing the washing. I don't know.'

He reached for the sheets, threw them into the bathroom hamper, then took both her hands and kissed them, rubbing his thumbs across the sore and broken skin of her wrists, the bruises now fading from black to purple, on their way to green.

She pulled away. ‘I need a shower, I need to get clean. I need to be in my own clothes.'

‘I need to know why my knife block is missing.'

She froze, half-turned towards the shower room.

‘Miriam?'

‘I don't know where it is,' she told him truthfully.

‘You asked Rina to remove evidence?'

‘Not Rina, no. Mac, leave it, please. I did what I had to do, that's all, and those who love you helped out.'

‘And if anyone finds that out?'

‘Why should they? Mac, I did what I had to do, same as you did. Maybe we both got it wrong, but we did our best. I'm alive, you're back here.'

‘I nearly got you killed, and I may be back here but I'm still suspended, still under investigation.'

‘No,' she said sharply. ‘
Thomas Peel
nearly got me killed. You did what you thought you had to do. You came for me, Mac; that's all I need to know. And I had the knife block disappeared; that's all
you
need to know.'

It wasn't. He slumped down on the bed, wondering exactly what she'd done. Who had come here, if not Rina? Tim, then; he'd have to have used Rina's key. Joy too? Could any of this be traced? Suddenly it was all too much. In the morning he might try and make sense of it, but now all he wanted was, like Miriam, to get clean, to eat, to sleep with her beside him, to forget about the world and all of its problems.

He could hear the shower running and he went through to the kitchen to put the kettle on and see if there was anything in the fridge that he could use to produce a decent supper. Preferably, something that required no sharp knife to prepare.

He looked at that place on the counter where his knife block had stood and remembered the beach and Thomas Peel dead. He had brought the flashlight from the car, gone through Peel's pockets to find the key to the handcuffs he had used on Miriam, and then he had seen the black, polymer handle protruding from the dead man's side, and he had known. His knife, from his block, in his kitchen.

Karen
, he thought now. She had been here, she had taken it, she had used it.

He heard Miriam turn off the shower and the cubicle door open and then close. He crept back down the stairs, half-ashamed of the fear that now gripped him, knowing that fear is an infectious thing and not wanting Miriam to be infected. For the first time since he had moved into the boathouse, he shot the bolt on the outer door and used the deadbolt to lock it fast.

Fitch had driven from Rina's straight for a meeting with Abe Jackson. They met in a little pub Abe had found that served good food and at which Abe had now become a regular. Fitch tucked into beef and ale pie and some very good mashed potato, while Abe brought him up to speed on what he had discovered so far.

Billy Tigh, the young man who had killed Philip Rains in prison, had not been one of Rains's victims, but there was evidence that his brother had been.

‘The parents separated. Billy went with his dad, and his brother, Terry, with his mum. Same mother, different fathers, which might explain it, I suppose. Anyway, the mother took up with a man called Brian Curtis, who, it turns out, was a friend of Philip Rains.'

‘Curtis?' Fitch frowned, a forkful of pie halfway to his mouth. ‘Why does that ring a bell?'

‘Because Sara Curtis was a prison visitor. She went to see Rains on several occasions. Brian is her brother. Peel implicated him, but there was no evidence and it was passed off as vindictiveness on Peel's part. Sara had, of course, gone through all the necessary checks when she became a prison visitor; it was just assumed that Peel was trying to make trouble for a pillar of the local community.'

Fitch rolled his eyes. ‘And do we know different?'

‘About Sara Curtis? Not yet. About her brother, yes. Terry killed himself a year ago. He left a long and very rambling letter in which he implicated Brian Curtis, said that while Curtis was seeing their mother, Brian regularly abused him – and we know there was a strong connection between Brian Curtis and Philip Rains.'

‘And Peel knew about this, presumably. Maybe told Billy Tigh that Rains was guilty too. No, wait. Mac said he told Peel that Rains was dead, and Peel seemed surprised, very surprised that Billy Tigh was involved. If Peel didn't tell Billy about Rains . . .'

‘Maybe Karen did.'

‘Why would Karen take an interest in Terry or Billy Tigh?'

‘Because her dad also knew Rains, did time with him when Parker was in for armed robbery. Rains had been a driver on a couple of bank jobs, and like attracted like, presumably. No one knew about his other proclivities then, but . . .'

‘But it all links together one way or another. Karen looks set to get her own back on anyone she thinks might deserve it. I mean, apart from any financial advantage she may be getting out of all of this, she seems set on getting rid of anyone who came within a whisker of harming her brother.'