by Emma Snow
True, he had been there the night she died. But he was doing what he thought was best. She had rung him from Alex’s house, telling him she needed picking up, that she’d been in an argument.
He’d set off straight away, telling her he’d wait at the edge of Alex’s estate. Or his father’s estate as it was then. He’d sat in his car and waited for her. And waited.
It was just after eleven o’clock at night, pitch black. It had stopped raining an hour before and the ground was still soaking wet. She had a torch on her phone but either she hadn’t used it or she’d forgotten about it.
He was able to piece together what happened from the inquest afterwards. She’d walked out of the back of Alex’s house, drunk as a skunk. She’d staggered around the side of the house and then instead of getting onto the drive, she’d taken the track to the left by mistake. After a minute or two of walking, she’d slipped on the wet grass and slid down the side of a ditch that had recently been dug to sort out the drainage problems towards the edge of the estate. She’d hit the bottom of the ditch and blacked out, her head under water, tangled in a mess of weeds. She was found the next morning. She was dead within minutes of hitting the water.
All the while he was sitting in the car, wondering where the hell she was. If only he’d gone to look for her, if only he’d not been so petty as to refuse to set foot on Alex’s land. But if only if only would not bring her back.
Her death had destroyed the family. For his father to blame him, to even hint that he might have let her die, it was too much to bear. Was it all his fault though? If he’d driven up to the house, she might still be alive. But he’d just assumed she had made up with Alex and after an hour of waiting, he’d rung, got no answer, then left a message cursing her for mucking him about before going home and going to bed, waking up the next morning to two police officers in the house, his mother in floods of tears, his father glaring at him as he came downstairs.
Watching Jenny and Timothy holding hands brought it all back to him, how the family had been when he was young versus how it was now. Broken forever. Never to be healed again.
He began walking again, heading into the visitor centre and finding Joanne behind the counter, telling Jenny and Timothy where the nearest cafes were. Once they’d headed out, she turned to him.
“Find what you were looking for?” she asked.
He waved the file. “I’ll leave the key with you if you like.”
“That’s fine, I’ll pass it on to Martha.” She smiled. “So how long have we got the pleasure of our company for?”
“Probably another day or two.”
“Then where are you headed? Where’s home for Mr Benjamin Robertson?”
“Back up to Scotland.”
“Oh, whereabouts in Scotland?”
“Jude Island.”
“I don’t know that one.”
“Not many people do.”
She glanced around her, as if making sure the visitor centre was empty. “Between me and you,” she said, her voice low. “You’re probably doing the right thing.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yeah. I don’t know how much your Dad’s told you but this place is losing a lot of money. I’d hate for you to see it get closed down.”
“Right, well I better get back. Speak to you in a bit.”
Ben couldn’t get out of there fast enough. There was no reason for her to tell him that. She’d shoehorned it into the conversation. For the life of him, he couldn’t work out why but then it hit him. Was she working for Alex? It would make sense. Was she getting paid to spy on the place?
The easiest way to find out was to see just how much money the place was making. But to do that he’d need his father’s permission to look at the accounts. Or maybe not. Maybe he could talk to Martha instead.
The thought of an excuse to talk to her made him strangely excited. He had completely forgotten about the black knight in his pocket.
TWENTY-TWO
Timothy sat with Jenny in the Old Police Station cafe. From his seat he could look outside at the day-trippers parking up and stretching their legs. Jenny was demolishing her piece of chocolate cake at record speed but he had yet to take a bite of his slice of lemon drizzle. His tea was also ignored.
He was thinking about Jenny, about how she was just a couple of years older than Martha when it had all happened. He wanted to wrap her up in cotton wool, lock her away somewhere so nothing could happen to her.
It was a thought that hurt him. The reality of the world was that you couldn’t protect those you love from every danger that lurked out there. All you could do was try to equip them with the ability to take on the world.
Had he brought Cathy up well? Sometimes she seemed to hate him. Yet she had asked him to look after Jenny completely out of the blue. She must still have some feelings for him. He leaned back in his chair, refusing to think about the fire. But then if he did that, the thought of Samuel came back to him, the thought of Lisa, of what had just happened to her. How she’d been left in that bathtub. It shocked him to think of her. He’d not thought of her for some time and he felt guilty, as if his every moment should be spent mourning her, as if he had no right to think of anything else.
He pushed his plate away, knowing that his appetite wasn’t going to come back. “Enjoying it?” he asked.
Jenny nodded, grinning with chocolate smeared over her teeth.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” he said. “Well, when you’re done we can take a walk up onto the moors if you like, or pop into the book shop down that way.”
“Books,” Jenny said, spraying crumbs across the table. She put her hand over her mouth and giggled. “Sorry.”
“Books it is,” he replied, picking up a napkin and gathering up the crumbs. “If you promise not to spray me with food anymore.”
Was Samuel out there at that very moment? He couldn’t stay in the castle the entire time, not without drawing attention to himself. But he could still remain vigilant, ready to act as soon as he was needed.
He tried not to think about what he might have to do, about what would happen if he failed. Instead he made himself think about Jenny, helping her to choose a mountain of books from the bookshop to take back to the holiday cottage.
He told himself he was only buying them to stop her getting bored if the storm that was due hit early. But in the back of his mind he knew that if she was occupied reading, he would better be able to keep an eye on Martha, watch her at work, be ready to save her from Samuel. Once he showed up.
He had no idea that Samuel was sitting just two tables away from him, eyes fixed on Jenny.
TWENTY-THREE
D.C.I Gregg stood in the reception area of the Beeches Care Home thinking what a waste of his time all this was. He’d travelled there against his better judgment and all because of a hunch. The classic detective’s hunch. This one hadn’t paid off.
Something had been off about Timothy Burleigh and he needed to know what it was. It would niggle at him otherwise. He wasn’t the only detective working on the Lisa Kirke case but he was the only one who thought Burleigh hadn’t done it. The rest of the team was working on the assumption that the old man had killed her, for reasons they had yet to work out, then rung the police deliberately to throw them off the scent.
Gregg wasn’t so sure. Ever since he’d begun his training, he had followed his instincts. They hadn’t let him down yet. He had searched the house and found the letters, had found a link to this Martha Coleman. She was next on his list of visits. No one else was interested in her yet. They were all digging into Timothy’s background.
He wanted to know what link the old man had to this place. His background said he used to fund this place, that was his link to Lisa and to Martha. But no one he’d spoken to remembered him. Nobody even knew his name. He’d seen the paperwork that showed the site had been sold after the fire that had killed three of the girls and an employee, the man who became known as the Gamesman.
He intended
to look at the details of the deaths when he got back. First he wanted a feel for the place. He’d found nothing. There was no remains of the old building. What had been left after the fire had been pulled down and a replacement built shortly afterwards.
The new owner, a Mr Lancet, had told him as much, backing up the paperwork. “I took over in 2008, he said during the interview. “I’m sorry I can’t be more help. Apparently, Mr Burleigh hadn’t been on site since the fire and had basically switched off from what he should have been doing.”
“And what should he have been doing?” Gregg asked, sitting in Lancet’s office.
“More hands on. Not leave it all to the site manager. You can’t just invest and expect a return on this kind of place. It’s a home for children who have lost everything. All I ever saw Mr Burleigh do was potter about in the garden.”
“Did he ever talk to you about Samuel Lyons?”
It was the only time the light faded in Lancet’s eyes. “That was a tragic case but you must understand things were different back then. Background checks weren’t carried out as thoroughly as they are now. If they had been, he would never have been employed here.”
“Was Mr Burleigh responsible for hiring him?”
“No, that was the manager at the time.”
“And that was?”
“Adrian Ferns.”
“Do you have his details handy at all?”
“I’m afraid he died not long after the fire.”
“Did he? Do you know what from?”
Lancet lowered his voice. “Suicide. He felt responsible for what had happened.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t realise.”
“You couldn’t be expected to know. And that’s all in the past now. We’re a very different place D.C.I Gregg.”
“I’m sure you are.”
The interview had gone on for most of the morning but it had been almost a total bust. All he had found out was that Burleigh was hands off, leaving Ferns to make all the decisions, and to take the blame for what Samuel Lyons did.
It was when he was leaving the building that he finally got a decent lead. He had said goodbye to Lancet. He had stood in reception, thinking this had been a waste of his time. Then he had walked out of the front door and as he did so, a caretaker had beckoned him over to the corner of the building.
“You’ve been asking about the Gamesman?” the caretaker said in a quiet voice, cigarette sticking from the corner of his mouth.
Gregg nodded. “You know something?”
“I know that there was a man here at the time who was off the books.”
“Who?”
The caretaker held his right hand up and rubbed his fingers together. “You don’t get paid much in a job like this.”
Gregg sighed, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a twenty. He’d been in this situation before. He could make it formal, take the man in to question. But then he’d clam up and he’d get nothing out of him.
“We called him Tony. He was one of them slow people, you know, an idiot.”
“Mentally deficient?”
“That’s it. That. He hung around the place and helped out a bit.”
“And what happened to Tony? Where is he now?”
“That’s the funny thing. He vanished the day before the fire. No one ever saw him again.”
“Wasn’t he reported missing?”
“Burleigh didn’t know about him. Only Lancet did and he liked him, saved paying for another member of staff.”
“What do you think happened to him?”
“I think Samuel Lyons was the cleverest man I ever met and if someone that clever got stuck in a room with no escape when it was on fire, I’d be a Dutchman.”
“Go on.”
“Well, what if your suspect wanted everyone to think he was dead? What would he do?”
Gregg shrugged, letting the man talk, just as he’d been trained to do.
“He might take someone no one would miss. He might deal with him and then have his body near the chemicals in the storeroom so the heat would be too much to identify him from his teeth. Then when the police start knocking around, they find a man’s body and think all’s well and good. What do you think?”
“I think you’ve got a very vivid imagination, Mr…?”
“Frank. Call me Frank.”
“You got a surname, Frank?”
“Donaldson. What do you reckon, detective?”
“Why are you telling me all this, Frank? Why didn’t you say so at the time?”
“Don’t you think I did? I tried to tell ‘em. No one would listen. Told me to keep my mouth shut and keep out of it. I knew it’d come back around someday though. As for Burleigh, I never saw a man so torn up. He was obsessed with them girls, never wanted them out of his sight after that.”
“What makes you say that?”
“You ever save anyone’s life?”
“Once or twice.”
“You ever run into a burning room and drag two girls out and see three dead ones next to ‘em? Leave your arms scarred to hell by the blaze?”
“Can’t say I have.”
“Well he did, and he never stopped talking about them. He talked about the girls long before the fire, used to stand and chat about how pretty they all were.”
“And were they?”
Frank shrugged. “Can’t say I noticed that much? But Burleigh, he’d have had paintings done of them if he had his way.”
Gregg sat in his car five minutes later, running through what he’d learned. There were two options as far as he could tell. One was that Timothy Burleigh was right. Samuel Lyons hadn’t died in the fire and was still out there. He had killed Lisa Kirke and was at that moment travelling to kill Martha Coleman. He’d get the locals to look her up, check she was all right. That would do for now.
Not everything Frank had told him had the ring of truth to it. There was a bitterness to his voice. What seemed much more likely than the mysterious Tony being the body in the fire was that Frank had been hard done by when Burleigh was in charge. There was a suggestion of score settling to the things he said.
But he had to follow the line of investigation where it would take him. Burleigh could have been obsessed with the girls. Burleigh could have started the fire himself. It wasn’t impossible. He could have found out about Samuel’s history and known he would be blamed for their deaths.
He could have kept tabs on Lisa and Martha afterwards, make sure they stayed quiet about what he’d done. Then when Lisa threatened to talk, he paid her a visit. Then what would he do? He’d pay Martha a visit too. Perhaps tie up the last loose end of the whole thing?
The biggest problem with noble man rescuing girls from inferno was that people weren’t that noble. He’d learned that from the years of work on some of the cases that would give the public nightmares to hear about. The balance of probability said that Samuel was dead and that Burleigh was the killer. But did that fit the facts as they stood?
He decided he needed to talk to Timothy Burleigh again. Interview him properly. He had let him go because he felt certain he needed to, needed to see what he would do, where he would go.
TWENTY-FOUR
Martha sat on a bench at the edge of the castle site, Ben sitting next to her. Behind them was a tall hedge, blocking out the worst of the wind. Behind that was a row of holiday cottages, Martha could just hear a radio playing back there, every now and then a hint of music would make it through the hedge before dying away again. The only other sound was the rustling hedge. Ben was silent, looking deep in thought.
She’d found him sat there when she’d done her sweep of the site, preparing for the guided tour she was about to give. She always liked to check there was no litter dotted about, knowing what a poor impression that would give to those who’d paid handsomely for a personalised tour of the castle and its surroundings.
The tour group was due to arrive in half an hour, giving her time to see why Ben looked so serious. She was surprised by how hap
py she was to see him sitting there. She’d already told herself not to get excited about him being here, about there being a man around her age to talk to. He wasn’t going to be there for long. He would be back in Scotland soon, according to Jenny.
But at least she could see what was wrong with him. He’d said little when she sat down, before suddenly asking her what she thought about families. Just out of nowhere. “What do you think of families?”
“What about them?”
“Is there a normal one, do you think? One where everyone gets on well and they have conversations and meals around the table and days out and things like that?”
“I don’t know. What makes you ask a question like that?”
He glanced across at her. “I was looking at that guy in with his granddaughter earlier. They looked happy, didn’t they?”
“I suppose so.”
“Were you happy with your family?”
Martha didn’t answer straight away. She’d had several occasions like this, where she had to choose between lying or telling the truth. Lies meant fewer questions. The truth meant very long conversations that she didn’t often like having. “I guess,” she said, hoping that was a reasonable compromise. The truth but not all the truth. “Were you?”
He sighed, stretching his legs out on the grass in front of the bench. “I remember being happy when I was little.”
“What was your Dad like? It’s hard to imagine Peter being a parent, or you being little.”
“The castle looked bigger, I remember that.”
“Is that it?”
“He was always busy. There was always something that needed doing. I remember having to play with my sister a lot.”
“You have a sister?”
