Written in Blood (36 page)

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Authors: Chris Collett

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BOOK: Written in Blood
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‘I thought my sister’s mental health problems stemmed from her failure to cope academically at university,’ said Fliss, as the letter circulated the room. ‘Diana never told me the truth, but when I found this I contacted her friend Norman Balfour. He knew all about it. It seems that shortly after she started at university Diana went out with a man who raped her. The resulting pregnancy came as a terrible shock for my parents. My father died not long afterwards. Diana always said it was her fault, and now I understand why.’
‘So the baby was adopted?’ Knox said.
‘In the circumstances, giving up her baby must have seemed the only option. Norman helped to arrange it all. It must have been terrible for Diana. She travelled up to the retreat all on her own and was alone when she gave birth.
She got to take care of her baby for six weeks, but at the end of that time she just had to hand him over and never see him again. No wonder she never got over it.’
They’d forgotten that Flynn was listening in. ‘Tom had asked me to find out the location of the photographs we found,’ he said, his voice crackling from the phone. ‘While most of them were in Sir Geoffrey Ryland’s safety deposit box, one of them was found at the house. He must have known it was different.’
Fliss Fitzgibbon’s voice trembled. ‘It would have been the only picture Diana had of her baby.’
‘There’s something else,’ said Flynn. ‘It didn’t seem significant at the time. The message:
vengeance is mine
, it was written in Diana Ryland’s blood. Forensics thought it was convenience, her body was next to the closed window, but perhaps it was a conscious decision by the killer.’
‘
Vengeance is mine
,’ repeated Coleman. ‘This man took revenge on the mother who gave him up at birth. You said someone told you about this?’ he asked Fliss.
‘Norman Balfour. He’s an old family friend.’
‘Does he know what happened to Diana’s child? Did he ever contact her?’
‘Norman didn’t think so. They wouldn’t have wanted that. I think it would have killed Diana.’
‘That’s what made Sir Geoffrey so vulnerable to blackmail, ’ said Coleman. ‘He wasn’t protecting himself, he was protecting his wife.’
‘It’s exactly what Geoff would have done,’ Fliss agreed.
‘He’d have gone to the ends of the earth to keep her safe.’
‘This child would be in his early forties now. Do we know anything about him?’
‘Nothing.’
The letter had worked its way back to Coleman’s desk. Knox picked it up and re-read the heading. ‘But this retreat, Our Lady of Lourdes, arranged the adoption, so they might have records, or know where they are. It’s what the boss was trying to find out. He knew it would lead him to the identity of the killer.’
‘And if our man knows that Tom is on to him—’
‘He’ll be after Tom, too.’
‘If he hasn’t found him already.’ Anna’s voice trembled as she put into words what they’d all been avoiding.
‘And we don’t have a fucking clue who he is, or what he looks like,’ said Knox.
‘Where was this retreat place?’ asked Coleman.
‘A place called Wicktown,’ Fliss Fitzgibbon said. ‘I looked it up. It’s about fifteen miles north of Glasgow.’
‘You want me to get hold of the local force, Boss?’ Knox asked.
‘That will take time, and if it’s a remote area, they’ll be low on manpower.’ Coleman was weighing up the options.
He reached a decision. ‘We’ll achieve more by going up there ourselves. We know what we’re looking for, so will pick up on anything more loosely connected. See how quickly we can book flights.’
Knox was unenthusiastic. ‘Me too, sir?’ It was the last thing he wanted.
‘Is that a problem?’
‘No,’ said Knox, his reluctance unmistakable. ‘I’ll get on to it.’
As he left the room, Knox overheard Anna enlightening his baffled boss. ‘Tony doesn’t like flying,’ she said.
Chapter Twenty
 
 
Mariner woke, disturbed by a movement, something or someone was there. Terror tightened his chest, and he tried to slither back, pressing himself against the wall. ‘Who’s there?’
‘I’ve come to say goodbye, Tom.’ It was a man’s voice, a few feet away to his left, hoarse, husky and unrecognisable, like the voice that had phoned him in London.
‘Why am I here? What do you want?’
‘I want what’s owing to me.’
‘What’s that?’
‘I want a life. The kind of life you’ve had. Swaps are very fashionable these days, aren’t they? There are house swaps and wife swaps so why not a life swap too? You can have my shitty one and I’ll have yours. I want you to share my experiences, but don’t worry, not all of them. I’ll spare you the beatings, and you won’t be forced to scrub the floors and walls until your hands bleed. But I will leave you in this dark, freezing cellar and starve you, to death eventually, so that when the time comes, I can take what’s rightfully mine.’ The lilting accent was beginning to show through.
‘You killed the Rylands.’
‘You’re good at your job, I’ll say that for you. When did you work it out?’
‘After I’d spoken to Fliss. I realised what her sister’s breakdown was all about. It was nothing to do with academic failure. It was you, wasn’t it?’
‘I’ve never been described as an illness before, though I’ve been called a few nasty things, most of them by my loving parents, when they could be arsed to speak to me at all.’
‘Your adoptive parents. Is this what it’s all about? Revenge on the person who landed you with them?’
‘I should have had a different life. I should have had a privileged life, with wealth and education, or at the very least love and affection. I could have been successful. Instead I grew up in a house where beatings, starvation and filth were the norm, where I was treated the same as the pigs in the sty. It’s no start in life, you know.’
‘Things didn’t work out perfectly for me, either.’
The bitter peal of laughter made Mariner shudder.
‘You have no fucking idea. Look at you, a good job, nice house, a lovely woman. I bet she’s a great shag. You’ve got everything you could possibly want. Except that now I want it. I’ve had my revenge on the woman who put me there. Sadly not so satisfying as I had hoped it would be. I had to get the job done quickly so I barely had time to introduce myself to my mother before blasting her brains out. But now the recompense; a comfortable life, the life that’s rightfully mine.’
‘But you have a good life, a successful business—’
A sardonic laugh. ‘What business? I packed that in years ago, working my arse off being nice to people. Earning a pittance from a boss who thrived on humiliation? The best thing about it was trying to try and sell a security system to Hollyfield Grange, when suddenly my life took a turn for the better.’
‘You found out about your mother.’
‘It didn’t take much to chat up the girl on reception. She was an easy lay, and first time I shagged her in one of the empty guest rooms, she told me. ‘You’d better wear a condom, I don’t want get pregnant. Though I’m in the right place, aren’t I?’ I didn’t know what the little cow was on about, until she told me that Hollyfield was a home for unmarried mothers. She’d seen all the old records in the basement. I knew it then. Mam was always threatening to send me back to “the home” and I just knew this was the place.’
‘You knew you were adopted.’
‘I was never allowed to forget it, that I was a bastard-child, I was worthless and I deserved everything I got.’
‘So the girl found your records?’
Another laugh. ‘You think I’d trust her? A couple of weeks later I demonstrated how weak their security was, broke in and found it myself. All things come to those who wait. I’d given up ever knowing by then. I’d tried for years to discover who the bitch was who had dumped me with those evil people, but each time I just hit a brick wall.’
‘It must have taken you a while to track your mother down.’
‘Her address was on the record card. It might have been harder if she was nobody, but when you live like she did it’s easy to find out. That’s what really hurt, seeing the kind of life she’d had and knowing that I could have been part of it.’
‘Giving you up destroyed your mother. She suffered every bit as much as you did.’
‘Who the hell fucking cares? It was her choice and her decision. She didn’t have to give me up. She could have afforded to keep me. But she couldn’t stand the stigma. Abortion would have been better than being raised in that hell-hole.’
‘It wasn’t her fault. She was forced into a bad decision.’
The voice rose in anger. ‘She could have kept me if she’d really wanted to. Your mother did. What’s more important, your child or your reputation?’
‘You can’t just take over my life,’ Mariner croaked.
‘I can recreate it though, given the right resources, and with you out of the way it can be done.’
‘You’re planning to contest the will?’
‘I have DNA proof that Diana Ryland was my mother.
That I’m her flesh and blood.’
‘It’s not that simple, surely.’
‘Ah, it won’t be easy, I know, but it can be done. It has to be. I didn’t want it this way. It would have been much better for everyone if Sir Geoffrey had continued to play ball. Those regular little payments would have helped me to start my new life.’
‘So it was blackmail.’ Knowing he was right brought Mariner no comfort.
‘It was gratifying to know how easily I could get at them.
He was desperate to keep me away. He said that seeing me again after all those years, and learning what had happened to me, would kill her. Ryland paid me to keep my distance, and everything would have been fine if he’d continued to co-operate. But then he let me down in the small matter of my inheritance. I wasn’t being unreasonable. I was prepared to wait. But I was meant to get everything; enough to keep me in luxury for the rest of my days. Then Ryland let slip that there wasn’t just me. He taunted me with you. You’d made something of yourself, and what’s more you could get me into a lot of trouble. I thought he was bluffing, so next time we met he brought proof.’
‘
At Pearl’s Café.’
‘Hah! A bunch of fucking useless photos and press cuttings. For an intelligent man he was pretty stupid. He told me you were the polis. Ooh, that really scared me. But he’d ruined it. At the time you didn’t even know he was your dad, but he was going to tell you. And then he would write you into the will, too. That way he said it would be fair. Fair! As if anything in life is fair. I couldn’t have that. I had to do something, rather sooner than planned.
‘I’d read all about Joseph O’Connor and the controversy surrounding his release. All I had to do was set him up. It all went brilliantly at first. Special Branch completely bought it, as I knew they would. It was simple. But then you came along and started interfering with that too. The others were happy to accept O’Connor as the fall guy. Seemed like justice was finally being done. But you couldn’t let it go, could you?
‘Not that it’s mattered, at the end of the day. Ryland had given me enough information to find you. Pompous bastard didn’t even realise what he’d done. I hope you appreciate the effort I went to with the name, by the way. Weren’t quite the Poirot with that one, were you?’
Mariner managed a half-laugh. ‘All the time it was staring me in the face.’
‘After that, everything fell neatly into place as if it was meant to be. Even Adolf Hitler played his part. From then on it was just a question of when and how.’
‘You tried to kill me before.’
‘I didn’t try very hard, not at first. An untimely accident, wrong place at the wrong time, it seemed like a good idea. If that bastard in the Merc hadn’t come along it might have happened, but I wasn’t too worried that it didn’t work out because now it’s given us this opportunity to talk. And it only delayed the inevitable.’
‘But why do you need to kill me too?’ Mariner said. ‘I don’t need anything. I could sign over my claim on the estate.’
‘Easy to say that now, but I was brought up on broken promises. People never mean what they say. They change their minds all the time. Let you down. And I’ve come this far, I’m not sure that one more death will make any difference. This way it’s tidier.’
‘But the Rylands were worth a fortune. There would be more than enough for both of us.’
‘Share it? Oh no. I never was any good at sharing anything. And why should I? The money belongs to my family. It was my mother’s. Your father just married into it.’
‘Why have another death on your hands? You’ll have killed four people.’
‘Five, but hey, who’s counting?’
The penny dropped. ‘You killed Eleanor, too.’
‘Only from necessity. While she was still around everything would revert to her. I hadn’t planned it. After all, she was not long for this world anyway. All I’d intended to do was check that there was nothing nasty in her will, to make sure that there wasn’t anything detrimental to me. But then I thought, why wait? Why not save time and finish her off too.’
Mariner felt sick. ‘I led you to her, didn’t I?’
‘Don’t flatter yourself. I’d been tracking Ryland for months, and he was a regular visitor there. But it was helpful to know when she’d be on her own. I’d been trying to work that out.’
‘So what’s it all for?’ Mariner asked wearily, his concentration beginning to flag.
‘I want my villa by the sea, where it’s warm and sunny, with my own swimming pool and a BMW convertible. Cyprus probably. I did a tour there while I was in the army.

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