Resolutions (8 page)

‘I wouldn't have phrased it like that, but no, I don't. If Peel disliked my attitude, he never gave any indication. It was nothing personal. I'm just a very busy man.' Stating that seemed to remind Marlow that he might be wasting time at that very moment. He got up – an indication that the interview was at an end. ‘I've really nothing more to say,' he said. ‘And I have to say that this is coming very close to harassment.'

Alec rose, but Mac waited for a moment. ‘Mr Marlow,' he said quietly, ‘I think that you and Peel have something in common after all – both busy people, both direct and to the point – but remember, Mr Marlow, the last time Thomas Peel wanted to make a point, he killed a child. He didn't have to kill her – he could have released her unharmed, even injured her but left her alive. He knew that it was just one man between him and freedom, that backup was a long way off arriving and that, whatever he did, that man would run to the child first instead of chasing after him. Peel could have simply left the scene, left Cara Evans standing on the beach. The outcome for Peel would have been the same, but, instead, he decided to make a point, to tell the world that here was a man who did not go in for half measures or incomplete actions, and so he killed that child.'

Marlow's eyes narrowed. ‘You're the one, are you? The one that let him get away?'

‘He read me right,' Mac said quietly, unable totally to keep the bitterness from his voice. ‘He read me right. He knew that Cara Evans would be my priority, not him. He knew he didn't have to kill her or harm her; he could still have run away and I'd still have gone to the child first. Yes, I'm the one that let him get away and I let him run because I still had that tiny, ridiculous little fragment of hope that I might be able to stop her bleeding to death. I've got
my
excuse,
my
reason for letting him get away. It may not be a good one, but it's there. What do you have, Mr Marlow? How will you feel when Thomas Peel kills again?'

Silence. Mac was suddenly aware of the ticking of a clock, of Alec's feet shifting against the thick pile of the carpet.

‘I'm not afraid of much,' Richard Marlow said at last. ‘I'd certainly never had any reason to fear the likes of Thomas Peel, not before – I'd not even taken notice of the man, truth to be told. He did his job; I didn't even think of him unless he was there, doing it. But that day, there he was, sitting on a stool in my bar, drinking gin and tonic, large as life and making no attempt to hide himself. I knew he'd come
because
I was there. Most of the regulars would expect me to be there on a Wednesday lunchtime, so it would have been no great stretch to assume I'd be there that Wednesday.'

‘Was he a regular?'

‘Had been, yes. He'd call in for a drink and lunch one day a week. I never gave it a thought. Suddenly, he was there again and he was bold, blatant. The bar staff didn't know him – they were both new to the job – but I don't think he'd have cared anyway. He said I owed him – more than a refund for the drink – and I asked him what the hell he meant. He just smiled, said I'd remember in time, but if you ask me, he was just trying to wind me up.'

‘And did he manage it?'

Marlow sat down again. ‘Damn right he did. But I still don't know what he meant.'

‘So . . . you think it was more than a wind-up?'

Marlow glared. ‘No, I don't. Don't you go putting words in my mouth.'

‘But suddenly you were afraid of him,' Alec said. He sounded, frankly, disbelieving.

Marlow flared, leaping back to his feet and pointing to the door. ‘Go, now,' he shouted. ‘I've got nothing more to say. Not to you, not now, not any more.'

Mac stood this time, but he took his time crossing the silent, almost quilted floor. He could feel Marlow's frustration and building anger as they left, footsteps loud on the precious parquet floor and then crunching on gravel as they returned to their car.

‘You rattled his cage,' Alec said.

Mac nodded. ‘Yes,' he said, ‘but I still don't know what about.'

SEVEN

R
ina had never been one to let a spot of weather stop her and she was out on the promenade mid-morning, breathing in the chill, damp morning air. The storm had raged all night, suiting her moiling thoughts perfectly, and now, having had little sleep, she was at least close to some kind of plan.

Out at sea, the first glimpse of a clearing day lightened the horizon, though grey clouds still sat low over Frantham as the night storm swept on inland.

‘It's going to be a lovely day,' Rina announced.

‘When?' Her companion was less impressed by a bit of white space in clouds that were still far out at sea. Tim pulled his scarf more tightly around his neck and tugged his hat down over his ears. It was, Rina thought, a measure of his discomfort that he'd agreed to wear not only the bright blue scarf that Bethany had knitted for him, but also the purple tea-cosy hat that Eliza had provided. The Peters sisters were inveterate knitters, though to Rina's knowledge they had, between them, only mastered two stitches and their choice of colours sometimes left a little to be desired.

‘When's it going to improve, then?' Tim demanded again. He did not like the cold or the wind, or being up this early in the morning when he'd been working the night before, his mentalist act at the Pallisades Hotel a few miles up the coast having been reprised at a very late private party after closing time.

‘Oh, by this afternoon, I expect,' Rina said. She smiled at the tall man shivering beside her. ‘You need to get a bit of meat on those bones,' she told him. ‘Then you'd feel the cold less. Lord knows how you eat as much as you do and never gain an ounce.'

‘Can we at least walk?' Tim asked plaintively. ‘Or even go and have a coffee. I'm freezing, Rina.'

She took pity on him and began to stride along the promenade, avoiding the coffee shop, much to Tim's disappointment. ‘Rina, this isn't going to turn into one of your yomps, is it?' He looked anxiously towards the end of the promenade and the cliff path that rose precipitously beyond that, leading out of town and into very exposed country.

‘I don't yomp, Tim. Only the SAS yomp, so far as I'm aware, and that is one role I never played, even in my extensive career. In fact, I was never much of a male impersonator.'

‘You actually like this weather, don't you?' Tim complained. ‘
You
had a good night's sleep.
I
didn't get in until nearly four.
I
shouldn't even be aware of the state of the weather yet. Why do you have to come out here to think when you've got a perfectly nice sitting room at home?'

Rina took his arm. ‘It will clear your head,' Rina told him, ‘and, Tim dear, I really do need you to have a clear head.'

‘This is about Karen, isn't it?'

‘It is indeed. Tim, I think I've been guilty of a grave misjudgement and I really don't know yet what the consequences will be.'

‘For George? Surely she can't do anything about George. Isn't he a ward of court or something?'

‘I don't think legal legitimacy will bother her, do you? But no, not just for George. I have this dreadful feeling that George is only one of her concerns.'

Tim paused, turned his mentor to face him and stared intently into her face. ‘You really are worried,' he said. ‘Rina, I've been through a lot with you these last few years; why should Karen coming back spook you so much now?'

Rina sighed. She patted Tim's hand and retrieved his arm, unable to look at him and still order her thoughts. To see Tim's concern somehow unnerved her, but she could feel it anyway. Rina was never unable to meet his eye; Rina never dissembled with him and, he was right, they had shared some really frightening times.

‘Tim, I'm afraid because I underestimated what Karen could become, I'm sure of it. Oh, she's done nothing yet, not here anyway. It's more . . . more the look of her, the way she has become so much her own person.'

‘I thought she always was,' Tim objected. ‘She always struck me as being very strong, very determined. The way she'd held the family together, protected her mother and brother. Rina, that took some doing.'

‘It did indeed and that, Tim, is what I saw in her back last winter when she and George came into our lives. I admired her spirit, I admired her courage. I saw, I suppose, a little of myself in Karen's tenacity and drive, and I wanted so much for her to have the chance to reach her potential. To be free to live her life and not have it blighted because she made what I thought at the time was a decision driven by desperation. So I did a very wrong thing, Tim: I let her leave when Mac knew she should be made to stay, face the consequences of what she had done.'

‘Rina, dear, you've lost me. I know Karen tried to kill her father, but after what he'd put them through I'm not sure anyone could blame her for that.' He paused. ‘That's not what you're talking about, is it?'

‘No, Tim, it's not. I'm talking about the death of Mark Dowling. The as yet unsolved murder of Mark Dowling.'

‘Ah,' Tim said.

‘Ah, indeed.'

‘You think Karen . . . why would Karen kill Mark Dowling? Rina, the list of people who wanted that nasty little . . . well, Mark Dowling out of the way – it would include half of Frantham, and I dare say the other half would have been pretty light on the objections. But you're not just speculating, are you?'

Rina shook her head and once more paused to lean on the promenade railing and stare out to sea. Sighing, Tim turned up the collar of his coat and shoved his gloved hands deep into his pockets, resigned now to being cold again, though glad they had not carried on past the end of the promenade and up the cliff. At least the yomp seemed to have been called off.

‘Rina, why haven't you told me this before? Does Mac know all of this?'

‘Oh, Tim. Look, this is what we think happened, though you've got to understand, as far as I know, Mac had no proof, not concrete proof at least, not then.' She took a deep breath and began. ‘Mark Dowling had been threatening George and his friend Paul. He found out about that stupid prank they played on Mrs Freer. In fact, it's quite possible that fear of Dowling was what put them up to it in the first place. Anyway, as everyone now knows, Mark Dowling killed Mrs Freer, for which act may he burn in whichever hell people like him are consigned to.'

‘Rina!' Tim was genuinely shocked. ‘Anyway, you don't believe in hell.'

‘For some people I'm prepared to waive my disbelief. Tim, Mac and I were both pretty sure that Karen killed Mark Dowling. Whether she did it purely to protect her brother from Dowling's bullying or whether it was also vengeance for his murder of the old lady is a moot point, but Mac was going to bring her in for questioning. He was fairly certain he could build a case.'

‘Does George know this?'

‘George knows, though we've not really talked about it. I don't think George has ever been under any illusions regarding his sister; he left that folly to the rest of us. Anyway, the morning Mac went to arrest Karen, I called her.'

‘You warned her? Rina that's . . . Does Mac know that too?'

‘I suspect that he suspects, but, again, some things are better left unsaid, even between friends. Maybe
especially
between friends. Anyway, Karen was gone when he arrived, and George, bless him, had put two and two together and figured out what she'd done.'

‘But why did you warn her?'

‘Oh, Tim, like I said, I made the most appalling error. Ironically, I acted out of the same concerns that led Karen to do such dreadful things. I wanted to protect young George. I felt he'd gone through enough.'

‘And you made the judgement that Mark Dowling got what he deserved,' Tim said flatly. ‘Oh, Rina, darling, sometimes we can't make those judgements, we really can't. Those decisions are just not ours to make.'

‘There was more, Tim.' Rina seemed set on maximum self-castigation. ‘To be truthful, I suppose I admired Karen. Her tenacity, her courage, her commitment to her mother and brother. I was wrong, terribly wrong, and, yes, I suspected that one day she'd come back; I just didn't think it would be so soon and, to be honest, Tim, I didn't think I'd be the one having to deal with her. I thought Mac would be here. I thought Mac would know what to do.'

‘If Mac had been here, she'd probably have just sneaked a quick meeting with George and been gone again,' Tim suggested. ‘But the fact is, she's here and Mac is gone and . . .'

‘And I've got to deal with the mess I've made,' Rina finished.

‘I didn't say that.' Tim reached out and touched her hand. ‘Rina, it's not entirely your mess. Circumstances created Karen. George too, for that matter. This mess started long before you interfered and the only misjudgement you made was due to some misplaced compassion. No one can think the worse of you for that.'

‘Can't they? Oh Tim, I'm not worried about it coming out that I warned Karen. Mac will be mad as hell, but he already suspects as much. I'm worried about . . . how can I explain this? It's that Karen has changed. Oh, the seeds of this new Karen were already there, and you're right, of course: circumstance created her, and maybe genetic factors as well – I really couldn't say. But it's the woman she's become that worries me. She's had time to harden her attitudes, to become vengeful.'

‘Vengeful?' Tim laughed, then stopped when he caught sight of her expression. ‘Rina, I think . . .'

‘That maybe I'm getting ahead of myself? Maybe I am, Tim, but she's changed. When we knew the old Karen, there was still something of the lost child hiding in there. With the right input, I believe that Karen could have been salvaged. But she's changed, Tim. I saw her, remember, and the young woman who came to Peverill Lodge yesterday was not the Karen that left here all those months ago. She's had time to find herself. Whereas before she was all the people her brother and her mother needed, now she's just Karen. Confident, purposeful. Her own woman, Tim, and I can't put my finger on what troubles me so much, but it does. Deeply.'