The Dead of Winter (24 page)

‘Right, go slowly,' Chandler instructed.

Suddenly reluctant, Rina followed Rav towards the tower.

‘You think he might be here?' Rav asked.

‘I don't know.' Chandler had moved towards a broken wall; she saw him sweep snow aside from what looked like the top of a narrow flight of steps.

‘No one's been here,' Rina said. ‘Look.'

The wooden door had been padlocked. The padlock was so heavily rusted that it must have been years since anyone had entered the tower. She tugged at it just in case, and the hasp pulled free from the wooden door-frame; the padlock refused to budge.

Rav pushed at the door. It creaked and groaned, and the hasp gave way completely, cracking part of the wooden frame. The door itself was frozen to the stone floor. Knowing it was a pointless exercise, but nonetheless caught up in the moment, the act of actually doing something, Rina helped as Rav leaned against the rotten timber. It gave with a sharp crack, and they both fell forward. Rav caught Rina's arm as she almost fell.

‘Everyone OK?' Chandler called to them. ‘Can you see anything down there?'

‘We're fine,' Rav said. ‘But the way in is completely blocked. Rocks and snow and an old bird's nest.'

Chandler tramped over to them. Rina peered into the tower herself, examining the small, circular room with a flagstone floor and drifts of autumn leaves pushed back against the walls. That isn't right, Rina thought. She withdrew her head and looked again at the padlock and the hasp and staple it secured, recalling how the hasp had torn away from the frame when Rav had shoved at the door. She could see now that the screws which should have held it fast had been exchanged for smooth, short nails, enough to fool the casual observer into thinking the door was secure. Enough, indeed, to fool the not so casual observer, but in fact very easy to lever out and thence to open the door.

‘Look,' she said. ‘And look inside. The door was open long enough for leaves to collect inside. The roof must be reasonably intact, the floor is dry. But you'd expect the leaves to have been blown just inside the door, maybe against this closest wall, not—'

‘Swept to the back. Scuff marks on the floor. Something was kept here. Recently.'

Chandler examined the lock, coming to the same conclusion as Rina. He was about to comment further when his phone began to ring. It was one of the other search teams reporting in. They had found Toby. It was not good news.

TWENTY-SEVEN

M
ac went with Chandler to the cottage where Toby's body had been found. The windows had been boarded up, but inside some of the furniture remained. Kitchen table and a couple of chairs, an old sofa in the living room. Someone had brought in a camping stove, and a half-dozen tins of food had been lined up beside it, together with a small kettle and a battered saucepan. There was evidence of a fire recently lit in the living room fireplace.

‘Wouldn't anyone have seen the smoke?' Mac asked.

‘I doubt it,' Chandler said. ‘The barn blocks the view from the road, and the cottage is in a dip; you can't see it at all from the house. You didn't even know it was here, did you?'

Mac had to agree that they had not. ‘Who would want to stay here?'

‘Rina's stranger?' Chandler suggested.

Toby's body lay on the hall floor. He was very cold and very dead. Blood congealed on his temple and matted his hair. It had pooled beneath his head, testament to the fact that he had lived long enough to bleed for a time after the blow had landed.

The floor was tiled and chill, and the air frosted as Mac breathed out. ‘Time of death? Best guess?'

‘Best guess on body temp is at least twenty-four hours. We can hope our friends the flies can give us a more accurate account, though I reckon it's too cold even for them to be out. Potassium decay in the eyes might help, but, again, time and chill are not on our side.'

‘Toby went missing the day after the seance. No one saw him after lunch, but we only noticed he had gone later that afternoon,' Mac said. ‘He ate lunch.'

‘Analysis of stomach contents might help then.' Chandler sighed. ‘We both knew this is what we'd find.'

‘Sir?' Constable Brown beckoned them into the living room. ‘You should see this.' He pointed to where the crime scene manager was photographing a little pile of plastic. ‘We think it's from a video camera. The LCD screen.'

‘No sign of the rest of it, I suppose? No memory card carelessly dropped by a fleeing assailant? No? Pity. It means he was filming something, though.'

‘Toby's room was at the back of the house, looking out this way. Maybe he saw someone and followed them here.'

‘Your Mrs Martin's mystery man, maybe. Right, let's get back to the house. Let the mortuary ambulance know it's got another passenger.'

Back at Aikensthorpe, Rina was dealing with a hysterical Melissa.

‘No! Not Toby, not Toby, not Toby.'

Screams gave way to sobs, and Rina wrapped her arms around the younger woman, shushing and soothing and finally convincing her to sit down and drink the tea Joy had brought for her. Miriam had gone off to see if she could be useful, and Tim and Joy were now with Rina and Melissa in the little room she used as her office. Tim stood helplessly by the door while Joy perched on the desk, not quite knowing what to do for the best. Tim was horribly shocked; Melissa something far deeper.

‘You knew him well, didn't you?' Rina said gently.

‘We're cousins. Toby said best not let on.'

‘Why?'

Melissa shrugged.

‘Melissa, someone killed Toby, probably the same person who murdered Edwin and Professor Meehan. Whatever you're hiding has got to be brought out into the open before someone else gets hurt. It isn't going to end here.'

Tears began to flow again, and Rina did not try to stop them. Sometimes people just needed to be allowed to cry.

Joy stood with Tim now, not saying anything, just holding his hand and looking at Melissa with deep compassion. Joy knew what loss felt like.

‘Why did you come to work here?' Rina asked.

Melissa shrugged. ‘I just thought, I mean, we've all grown up knowing about this place. I used to drive up here, just to look at it. When the job came up, it seemed perfect. When I got here it was all as if . . . It just felt right.'

‘Why, Melissa? What is this place to you?'

She sighed and slumped back into her chair. ‘It sounds so stupid when you say it out loud, but I used to fantasize about it. You know the way kids do. That one day they'll marry a prince and live in a big castle?'

A small bell rang in Rina's mind. What was it Rav had said about Melissa when they had all been planning to leave? The poor princess, alone in her castle.

‘But why this place?' Joy asked.

‘Because a long time ago it belonged to our family. It was home.'

‘You're related to the Southams?' Tim asked.

Melissa nodded. ‘Elizabeth and Albert had a daughter. She never lived here. Her name was—'

‘Grace,' Rina said.

‘Yes. How did . . . ? She was born in Italy, but eventually she came back to England and married Theodore Wright. Grace Wright was my great, great grandmother.'

TWENTY-EIGHT

‘
W
e were as close as brother and sister when we were kids,' Melissa said. ‘The whole family knew about this house and what had happened. It had become mythic, and we lapped it up. It was all so romantic. Toby and I, we'd talk about getting the house back and living here. No one ever thought we would, that was just impossible, but we dreamed about it.

‘Once, my dad brought us both here. It was a horticultural college then, and the gardens were open in the summer so we came to look at our house. It was so beautiful. We found out later that Albert Southam had set up some kind of trust fund, just in case his daughter came home. No one else was allowed to buy Aikensthorpe, even after he died. It could be leased or rented, but Grace was the real owner – and Grace was our ancestor.' She laughed weakly.

‘So, when you came to work here?'

‘I loved it. I just had to look after the place, supervise the renovations and take bookings at first. Then we started to get a few weddings, and I really thought we could make a go of it. I started to look for local caterers and staff, but the solicitor that handled everything said the owners only wanted this one catering firm to be used. I mean, they were good, but I knew if I shopped around I could get a better deal and maybe support local companies.'

‘So you got suspicious?' Chandler asked.

‘Not at first. Then, I don't know, it seemed a bit odd. The caterers would arrive with more vans than they needed, more people than I saw actually working in the marquees. Toby was over here for one weekend when we'd got a wedding on, and he filmed some of the so-called security staff. I mean, who needs security staff here? He called me up a week later and said he knew who they were, but I shouldn't say anything. He said I should resign, but it was all getting a bit more complicated.'

‘In what way?' Mac asked.

‘You were stealing from the estate, weren't you?' Rina asked.

‘How did—?' Melissa nodded. ‘Yes.'

‘Stealing what?' Mac asked.

Chandler fixed Rina with a curious look before turning his attention back to Melissa.

‘Books, mostly. The library had been left intact. It was a condition of the lease, just like it said we had to leave Albert's old study closed up. Apparently, when the place was leased, an inventory had been taken, and every couple of years the trustees would send someone up to check. When the place was eventually sold, that stopped, of course, but the Prices, who tried to run the hotel, they'd not bothered with the library. To them it was just quaint, atmospheric. Anyway, they left, the consortium took over. I came to work here, and Toby and I thought, hell, this should all have been ours anyway, so I started selling the odd book and other bits that the Southams, my ancestors, had left behind.'

‘What did you do with the money?'

She hesitated. ‘Toby had a gambling problem,' she said. ‘He was in debt to some really nasty people.'

‘Who knew the people who were doing whatever is going on here.' Joy sounded oddly wearied by the inevitability.

Chandler's attention shifted to her now.

‘What?' she said. ‘Networking doesn't just go on with legitimate business, you know.'

‘I know that,' he said caustically. ‘I'm surprised that you do.'

Joy fixed him with a steady gaze. ‘My dad was Jimmy Duggan,' she said. ‘I'm guessing you've been a policeman long enough to know all about him.'

Chandler said nothing, but Rina could hear the cogs whirring.

‘So,' Joy went on. ‘I'm guessing you found yourselves being blackmailed into being cooperative?'

Melissa nodded. ‘Toby was scared. But we were told that if I kept on running this place the way I'd been doing then they'd turn a blind eye.'

‘And the strange man I saw leaving two nights in a row?'

Melissa looked away. ‘He didn't kill anyone. His name is Clive Harding, and he's a dealer in antique books. I'd let him come in to see the library, and we'd found some stuff in the attics I thought might interest him so he came in to have a look around. I know it was stupid. It was a risk he'd be seen, but Toby was up to his neck. I had to do something.'

‘The casino had increased his credit limit,' Joy guessed.

‘How did you know?'

‘It's obvious,' Joy said. ‘They drag you in deeper, and you have to do more just to keep from drowning.'

She sounded sad, and Tim put an arm around her shoulders and hugged her tight. Joy had loved her father; he'd been a good dad, whatever else he was, and Rina knew it must be hard for her to have to look at Melissa's situation and know how her father would have acted in similar circumstances.

‘Jimmy Duggan was almost legitimate by the time he died,' Rina said. ‘He was a businessman.'

Chandler snorted his disbelief, but Joy smiled briefly, gratefully.

‘So, what do you think they were moving?' Mac asked.

‘My guess would be drugs,' Melissa said. ‘One group of catering vans would deliver, and then when the lorry came back – to collect the marquee and the tables and such – the boxes the caterers had unloaded would be picked up at the same time.' She shrugged. ‘I don't know any more than that. I didn't want to know.'

‘It's a good front,' Chandler said. ‘A legitimate business, vehicles moving to and fro that no one is going to think twice about. And a safe place for storage should they need to hold stock back.'

‘And then you find out that Edwin and David Franklin and Simeon are all shareholders, and that they were using Grace's name as well.'

She nodded. ‘I liked Edwin. I trusted him. I never thought—'

‘No wonder you were so shocked. Melissa, it's possible they don't know what's going on. Or that Edwin didn't, anyway.'

Melissa looked hopefully at Rina and then at Joy.

‘The other shareholder is a company called Reality Enterprises,' Rina said. ‘Then four individuals who may or may not have been involved with this. Melissa, how long had you known Edwin for?'

She thought about it. ‘A year, maybe. He came here to see about setting up the experiment last winter. We'd started to advertise Aikensthorpe as a venue, and he'd got to hear about it. He was interested because of the Southam seance.'

‘And so you saw him, how often?'