Death on the River: A gripping and unputdownable English murder mystery (A Tara Thorpe Mystery Book 2)

by Clare Chase

  An hour later she was wondering just how original Stephen Ross’s work really was. The last poem of his that she’d looked at, ‘To My Love at Evening Time’, reminded her of something that could have been written centuries earlier. There was lots of imagery, with allusions to the glow of rubies in the fading sun, and the gleam of alabaster with the rising moon. Lips and skin? The metaphors were effective but not exactly groundbreaking, Tara reckoned – though she was no expert. Ross talked about his role as protector and the vulnerability of his lover. The words were tender – full of emotion and a sort of anguish – but she felt there was an unfortunate trace of Wilkins in their strong-man, weaker-woman dynamic.

  She was still curious about the way Stephen had portrayed himself – as the intellectual linchpin of the group – versus the way Thom King and Philippa Cairncross had described him, as someone who was generally patronised. She tried putting Stephen and Ralph Cairncross’s names into Google together. The results page gave her a lot of articles that mentioned the whole acolyte group. She carried on scanning the list of hits. On the third page she found a link to a YouTube clip of Cairncross being interviewed about his final novel, Out of the Blue. He was in a TV studio and had the Acolytes there with him, arranged around him like groupies. The clip dated back to two weeks before he’d died. The interviewer was trying to get some hints about the book’s content. Ralph had laughed. ‘My lips are sealed. Of course the Acolytes know, but you won’t get anything out of them.’

  ‘You’ve shared the manuscript with them all, then?’ the interviewer asked.

  Cairncross nodded. ‘I let you read it first, didn’t I, Stephen?’ He glanced sideways at Ross and reached to pat him on the shoulder. Interestingly, none of the Acolytes looked pleased. It was understandable that the ones who’d had to wait to see the book should look irritated at the fact. Especially as Cairncross had implied they were inferior in some way in front of the TV cameras. But there was no smile from Stephen, either. His face was grim. ‘I knew there were elements he’d appreciate in a way that no one else could,’ Ralph added, as the camera zoomed in on his face. ‘But I value the opinion of the entire group, of course, beyond words. They’ve all read the manuscript now.’

  ‘I’ve got plenty of people to try to pump for information then,’ the interviewer said with a sycophantic laugh.

  Cairncross smiled. ‘Now, now. No underhand tactics. You’ve only days to wait before you can read the book for yourself!’

  Why hadn’t Stephen Ross been pleased at being singled out? Had Cairncross been secretly getting at him in some subtle way, rather than paying him the compliment that had been implied?

  She’d investigated Thom King’s work before, briefly, on the evening that she’d interviewed him. She could see from his website that he undertook commissions, which ranged from landscapes and grand houses to portraits. But the work he had for sale on various gallery websites – presumably what he liked to paint when left to his own devices – had a common theme. She found Woman in Blue (the painting did what it said on the tin), Woman in Yellow (ditto) and Woman on a Chair… he clearly hadn’t felt the need to get too creative with his titles. She also found a couple of portraits on sale that featured Christian Beatty. After seeing his broken body the day before, it was shocking to come face to face with images of him looking so vibrant. What a waste. Staring into his painted eyes gave Tara a sense of the power and physical presence the man must have had in life.

  She scrolled through more pages of Google results. On the fifth, when she’d been about to give up, she found a work in oils that caught her eye. It was called Power, which was unusual for a start. And when Tara enlarged the thumbnail, she realised she was looking at the face of Verity Hipkiss. He’d altered her hair – she was a brunette in this composition – but there was no mistaking her features. The smile she wore was cruel, and she’d been depicted as though she was looking down on the painter. She wore a very low-cut dress, so that much of the flesh of her breasts was visible. Goosebumps rose on Tara’s arms. Thom King had said Verity had never sat for him. Presumably he’d used a photograph then, to create this portrait, without her knowledge. It was so invasive, and the way he’d overlaid his feelings about her character was clear to see. Could he be systematically arranging the deaths of every man Verity had admired? It seemed far-fetched, but that painting made her wonder. She thought back to the man’s story of his near miss with a car – there was no proof the incident had really happened. If he was the guilty party he could have made it up, choosing a narrow escape that resonated with one of Ralph’s books to make himself look innocent…

  At eleven, another text came through from her mother. Tara still hadn’t replied to the one earlier in the day.

  Did Not Now make up your affair with this senior detective? Bear his family in mind, won’t you darling?

  Lydia would be at the post-cocktail stage of the evening now. She had probably worked up to sending her words of wisdom. She wished her mother would stop telling her things she already knew. There was every sign Lydia thought Tara was a witless moron with no brain cells of her own… the fact that her stepfather, Benedict, left a wife to be with her mother made the text an extra degree more irritating than it would otherwise have been.

  She took Verity Hipkiss’s book up to bed and plugged her phone with its unanswered text in to charge. She was so tired that the contents of the first chapter washed over her. She absorbed enough to know it was historical, and about a woman who defied the social norms. It opened with the upper-class heroine in bed with two men. Autobiographical, perhaps? Tara checked the dedication at the front of the book. It said: ‘To you all’.

  Before she went to sleep, Tara emailed her findings to Blake, knowing she should copy Wilkins in. To hell with that…

  Thirty-Five

  Blake had a beer and a plateful of fish in front of him, with home-cooked chips. It was something Frans had cooked whilst Agneta put their baby, Elise, to bed. He wasn’t sure if it was the relief of being somewhere where nothing was expected of him, or that Frans was one hell of a chef, but it tasted like the best thing he’d ever eaten.

  And, to salve his conscience, they did talk about work. The take-home point about Christian Beatty was once again the sheer amount he’d drunk the night he’d died. Surely no one planning that leap would have consumed so much if they’d been alone? As with Cairncross and Everett, there’d been no drugs in his body. If Beatty had been with someone else on Saturday night, could they have pretended to get drunk too, whilst watching him, carefully calculating the moment he’d lose his sense of judgement, yet still be able to make the climb?

  He and Agneta brought Frans up to speed, and then they all went to and fro, discussing the possibilities and who could have been involved: Philippa, who’d hated her father and the Acolytes, yet resembled the man they’d all loved; Tess Curtis, who felt left out of Cairncross’s ‘gang’ and who stood to gain from any scandalous insider knowledge Christian Beatty might have passed on to her; or even Verity Hipkiss, who’d perhaps tired of her affair with Cairncross and was determined to keep it a secret, so that his high praise of her debut novel continued to look unbiased. If she’d killed three people to keep her relationship quiet it would be a particularly heartless crime, but who knew what she might be capable of, if her future success was at stake? She was charming, Blake gathered, but that happened to be a trait frequently exhibited by psychopaths. Once again, he wished he’d had more direct involvement in the case. If they could just prove for certain that there’d been foul play, Fleming wouldn’t mind him muscling in…

  ‘Sure is a weird case, Blake,’ Agneta said. She’d been chipping in with questions, but behind the interest in her blue eyes he could see other things. He had a feeling she’d like to ask him about matters closer to home. He’d invited it, of course, by wanting to visit them alone.

  ‘I’m just hoping it doesn’t go any further,’ Blake said, trying to make sure the conversation stayed on work. ‘Until we understand w
hat’s motivating the killer – assuming Tara and I are right and there is one – we can’t be sure that they’ve finished.’ Cairncross’s books came to him again. How would the killer end their next victim’s life? Electrocution, suffocation or burning…

  ‘Here,’ Frans took up a fish slice with a black handle and red business end, ‘have some more. Long hours need extra calories.’ He shovelled a fresh pile onto Blake’s plate with a grin.

  Blake sat back in his seat and took a healthy draught of beer. ‘Thanks.’

  At that moment there was a high-pitched cry from the baby monitor on the sideboard. Agneta and Frans went still, and Frans rolled his eyes. After a moment of silence, there was another yelp, and then some more decided wailing.

  Agneta made to get up, but Frans put a hand on her arm. ‘No, I’ll go,’ he said. ‘You did all the settling.’ He left the room.

  Agneta turned to Blake, the question back in her eyes again. He half wondered if she’d primed Frans to handle Elise if the situation arose, so she could pump him for information. ‘So, you and Babette are having trouble again?’ she said.

  He stared down into his beer for a moment. When he looked up her expression was sympathetic.

  ‘You never really got past the first split, right?’

  ‘Has it been that obvious?’

  ‘Probably not to everyone. But I know you, remember.’ Her eyes were kind.

  ‘I should never have agreed to give our marriage another go – but I hated being apart from Kitty.’

  Agneta reached out and gave his shoulder a squeeze. ‘Don’t beat yourself up about that. I’d do anything for Elise. It’s natural to love your child.’

  He was going to tell her, he suddenly realised. The whole thing, not just the bits he’d shared before. ‘Not my child, in fact,’ he said.

  He could see Agneta hadn’t been expecting that.

  ‘Some other guy’s. Babette’s never told me who.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  Who would?

  ‘Tell me, Blake,’ she said. ‘Tell me what happened. Did you always know Kitty wasn’t yours?’

  He gave a deliberate cough. ‘Astoundingly, despite being an ace detective, I had absolutely no idea until the split, back when Kitty was a toddler.’ He felt the colour come to his cheeks. ‘Pretty embarrassing, huh?’ He met her gaze.

  ‘Not at all. But pretty damning on Babette if she kept it from you so completely.’

  He looked down at the table. ‘Apparently there was this man she saw a few times when we were first married. Usual story: I was working hard, it was as though she didn’t exist as a woman, etc, etc. She kept bumping into the guy through work; he paid her lots of attention and made a dead set at her. They slept together just once – or so she says. But Kitty was the result.’

  ‘How can she be sure?’ That was Agneta – rushing in where angels feared to tread. She caught up though. ‘Sorry – is it that you weren’t—’

  He cut her off mid-sentence. ‘No, we were. Despite the difficult hours. Babette took some of Kitty’s hair and her dad got a DNA test done.’ He shook his head. ‘And all the time, I still had no idea the guy even existed.’

  ‘So you told her to leave when you finally found out?’

  He shook his head. ‘That wasn’t how it worked. We’d been away for a weekend by the sea. We’d spent the whole time playing with Kitty, holding her hands, jumping the waves. It was idyllic, and I kept looking at her – a stompy little miracle – and thinking how lucky we were.’ Elise had stopped crying, but even if Frans came back, he couldn’t stop now. ‘I drove us home, and Kitty fell asleep in her car seat, so I carried her inside and put her to bed.’ He still remembered the feel of her – a solid, warm and precious bundle. ‘When I got downstairs, Babette was crying. It was then that she told me Kitty wasn’t mine. She’d been planning to break the news before, apparently, but she kept bottling out. As it was, it was right at the last minute.’

  Agneta’s eyes were huge. ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘She’d got tickets for her and Kitty – and the guy – to fly to Australia the following morning, where he was due to take up a new job.’ He took a deep breath. ‘She told me she’d realised she belonged with him, not me, and as Kitty was his anyway, I needed to think of her needs, not my own, and let her go.’ He pressed his thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose. ‘She said if I fought for her, it would damage her for good, but if I let her be with her natural father, she’d forget me before long, and only know stability.’

  ‘The total bitch!’ Agneta said suddenly, knocking her glass off the table and onto the floor. They both heard Elise start to cry again.

  ‘Thank you, my darling.’ Frans’ wry voice was transmitted over the baby monitor.

  In spite of himself, Blake laughed, and Agneta did too – it was a relief to release the tension – but they both stopped after a second. Adrenaline was pumping round Blake’s system. He still – after four whole years – couldn’t think about what Babette had done without an almost uncontrollable reaction.

  ‘So you let her go?’

  He nodded. He couldn’t look at Agneta again now – not without showing his emotions, anyway. And he thought Frans might lose the will if he came back downstairs and found he’d got a crying dinner guest as well as a crying daughter. ‘I didn’t have any time to think. I felt like killing Babette when she told me.’ And that wasn’t just a figure of speech. ‘The following day, I hugged Kitty as though I’d never let her go and watched Babette mouth “for Kitty’s sake” over her shoulder. And then she went. And they flew out to Australia.’

  ‘Did you ask her to come back?’

  He shook his head. ‘I was devastated, but I didn’t. The truth is, I wanted Kitty back, but not her.’

  ‘Hell, Blake – I’m not so surprised about that.’

  He swigged his beer. ‘No, I guess not. But in the event, she reappeared. Only a fortnight later. God knows how she afforded her ticket home. She came back saying what a fool she’d been, and that Kitty’s genes were irrelevant. She’d realised – she said – that she’d loved me all along, and the other guy – Kitty’s dad – had used emotional blackmail to get her to go with him. She said he’d told her Kitty should be with her real dad, and that he’d always have time for them – unlike me.’ He looked at Agneta. ‘I refused to try again at first. I wanted to be there as Kitty’s father, but I told Babette she should get used to the status quo of her “parents” living apart. Babs couldn’t understand that. She said if I still loved Kitty and could get over the fact that she wasn’t mine, then why couldn’t I go that one step further and be there for her properly, in the same house, married to her mother. And of course, we were still married.’

  ‘So she talked you round, eventually?’

  He nodded. ‘She said she wanted to put it all behind her. And because I’d been acting as Kitty’s dad all that time she’d warned the other guy off. Told him no court would grant him regular access to Kitty. I thought I could get past what Babette had done. She said she still loved me, and I had loved her. And each time Kitty saw me when Babette and I were apart, she was in tears because she didn’t understand what was going on.’

  Agneta got up. ‘Here.’ She fetched a shot glass from their dresser and poured some Swedish vodka into it. ‘You look as though you need it.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Vodka seemed to be becoming a theme. He drank it down straight. ‘It’s such a bloody mess. I’ve been a crap father to Kitty ever since. And certainly nothing like a husband to Babette. I’ve been wondering what to do.’ He glanced sideways at Agneta. ‘She wants another baby. But I can’t. I can’t forgive her. Not because she was unfaithful, but for her cruelty. For planning to steal Kitty away.’

  ‘You and me both,’ Agneta said, as Frans walked back into the room.

  Monday 17 December

  It amuses me to see that you’ve become a media star once again, Tara. You haven’t had much good press of late, have you?

 
; Of course, I wouldn’t normally read Not Now, but its content today was too tempting. And it confirmed that my thinking was sound when I developed this plot. I always knew people’s minds would be too pedestrian to accept the evidence I put before their eyes. They’d never believe the series of events I’m engineering are part of a carefully orchestrated scheme; the whole thing would be too far-fetched.

  It’s so satisfying to run rings around you all. And the staff at your old magazine really hate you, don’t they? I can see why. The longer you battle with this case the more I realise the kind of person you are. You’re on the side of the establishment; of the rich and the powerful. You don’t care about what they’ve done to people who ought to have been able to trust them.

  Is the rumour about you and your DI true, I wonder? Is the world full of people sleeping together when they shouldn’t?

  If the gossip is accurate then I suppose he’ll miss you when you’ve gone. You see, I’ve made my decision about your fate now, Tara. I’ve added you to my list. I’m going to have fun deciding on the method…

  If wiping you from the face of the earth also punishes the senior officer you’re working with, then so much the better.

  Thirty-Six

  It was mid-morning on Tuesday and Tara was in the car with Wilkins, approaching Madingley Road. He’d got his foot down – Blake was meeting them there.

  Tara was trying to digest the news and work out what to make of it.

  ‘Still convinced we’re dealing a series of coincidences?’ she said.

  ‘This latest development seems even less like part of a pattern, given the victim’s still alive,’ Wilkins answered.

  And that was true. Great news, obviously, but it made Tara wonder as well. She knew their killer took chances, things that might or might not lead to a death, but up until now, they’d always been via methods that would look like an accident if they failed. This time there was no innocent explanation. According to the report that had come in, Sadie Cairncross had been deliberately trapped in Ralph Cairncross’s archive store. Was the place airtight? Had this been an attempt at death by suffocation, to resonate with the death in All But Over, where the hero had allowed himself to be trapped in the storm shelter? But wouldn’t old manuscripts need air conditioning or something, to keep them from being damaged?