A Darker Domain

by Val McDermid

  ‘I can’t believe they got away with it,’ she said.

  Phil gathered the prints together and straightened the edges. ‘Lawson was looking in the wrong direction. And with good reason.’

  ‘No, no. I don’t mean the kidnap. I mean the affair. Everybody knows everybody else’s business in a place like the Newton. Easier to get away with murder than an extra-marital affair, I’d have said.’

  ‘So it looks like we’ve done what Lawson couldn’t do. Solved the kidnapping, tracked down Adam Maclennan Grant.’

  ‘Not quite,’ Karen said. ‘We don’t actually know where he is. And there’s the small matter of a lot of blood spilled in Tuscany. Which could be his.’

  ‘Or it could have been spilled by him. In which case he’s not going to be very keen on being found.’

  ‘There’s one thing we haven’t factored in,’ Karen said, passing Phil the result of the Mint’s searches. ‘It looks like Matthias the puppeteer might actually be a friend of Cat’s from art college. Toby Inglis has a description that you could stretch to cover Matthias, the leader of the motley crew. Where does he fit in the picture?’

  Phil looked at the paper. ‘Interesting. If he was involved in the kidnap, it might be more than embarrassment at his less-than-glittering career that’s making him keep a low profile.’ He finished his glass of wine and tipped it towards Karen. ‘Any more where that came from?’

  She fetched the bottle and refilled his glass. ‘Any bright ideas?’

  Phil took a slow mouthful. ‘Well, if this Toby is Matthias, he was an old pal of Cat’s. Could be that’s how he met Mick. It didn’t have to be planned, he could just have turned up out of the blue when Mick was there. You know what artists are like.’

  ‘I don’t, actually. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who was at art college.’

  ‘My brother’s girlfriend was. The one who’s doing the makeover at my place.’

  ‘And is she prone to being unreliable?’ Karen asked.

  ‘No,’ Phil admitted. ‘Unpredictable, though. I never know what she’s going to inflict on me next. Maybe I should have got you to do the job instead. This is definitely more easy on the eye.’

  ‘What I live for,’ Karen said. ‘Easy on the eye.’ There was a charged moment of silence between them then she hastily cleared her throat and said, ‘But here’s the thing, Phil. If they’d met when Mick was with Cat, then ran into each other by chance in Italy, how the holy fuck did Mick explain what had happened to Cat and how he’d ended up with the kid?’

  ‘So you’re saying he must have been involved in the kidnap too?’

  She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I really don’t know. What I do know is that we need to get the Italian police to find the person whose blood isn’t on the floor of that villa so we can ask them some pertinent questions.’

  ‘Another tall order for the woman who put Jimmy Lawson behind bars.’ He raised his glass to her.

  ‘I’m never going to live that down, am I?’

  ‘Why would you want to?’

  Karen looked away. ‘Sometimes it feels like a millstone round my neck. Like the man who shot Liberty Valance.’

  ‘It’s not like that,’ Phil said. ‘You nailed Lawson fair and square.’

  ‘After somebody else did all the work. Just like this time, with Bel doing the legwork.’

  ‘You did the work that mattered, both times. We’d still be back at square one if you hadn’t had the cave excavated and the Nottingham guys properly questioned. If you’re going to quote the movies, remember how it goes. “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” You are a legend, Karen. And you deserve to be.’

  ‘Shut up, you’re embarrassing me.’

  Phil leaned back in his chair and grinned at her. ‘Do they deliver pizza round here?’

  ‘Why? Are you buying?’

  ‘I’m buying. We deserve a wee celebration, don’t you think? We’ve come a long way towards solving two cold cases. Even if we’re landed with Andy Kerr’s murder as a sick kind of bonus. You order the pizza, I’ll check out your DVDs.’

  ‘I should speak to the Italians,’ Karen said half-heartedly.

  ‘With the time difference, it’s nearly eight o’clock there. Do you really think there’s going to be anyone with any seniority around? You might as well wait till morning and talk to the guy you’ve been dealing with. Relax for once. Switch off. We’ll finish the wine, knock off a pizza and watch a movie. What do you say?’

  Yes, yes, yes! ‘Sounds like a plan,’ Karen said. ‘I’ll get the menus.’

  Celadoria, near Greve in Chianti

  The sun was heading for the hills, a scarlet ball in her rear-view mirror as Bel drove east out of Greve. Grazia had met her in a bar in the main piazza and handed over the paper directing her to the simple cottage where Gabriel Porteous was living. Just over three kilometres out of town, she found the right turn indicated on the scrawled map. She drove up slowly, keeping an eye out for a pair of stone gateposts on the left. Immediately after them, there was supposed to be a dirt road on the left.

  And there it was. A narrow track weaving between rows of vines that followed the contour of the hill; you’d pass it without a second glance if you weren’t looking for it. But Bel was looking, and she didn’t hesitate. The map had a cross on the left side of the track, but it clearly wasn’t drawn to scale. Anxiety began to creep upon her as the distance from the main road grew. Then suddenly, tinted pink by the setting sun, a low stone building appeared in her sights. It looked one step above complete dilapidation. But that wasn’t unusual, even somewhere as fashionable as the Chiantishire area of Tuscany.

  Bel pulled over and got out, stretching her back after hours of sitting. Before she’d taken a couple of steps, the plank door creaked open and the young man in the photographs appeared in the doorway dressed in a pair of cut-off jeans and a black muscle vest that emphasized evenly bronzed skin. His stance was casual; a hand on the door, the other on the jamb, a look of polite enquiry on his face. In the flesh, the resemblance to Brodie Grant was striking enough to seem eerie. Only the colouring was different. Where the young Brodie’s hair had been as black as Cat’s, Gabriel’s was caramel coloured, highlighted with sun-streaks of gold. Other than that, they could have been brothers.

  ‘You must be Gabriel,’ Bel said in English.

  He cocked his head to one side, his brows lowering, shading his deep-set eyes even further. ‘I don’t think we’ve met,’ he said. He spoke English with the music of Italian underpinning it.

  She drew closer and extended a hand. ‘I’m Bel Richmond. Didn’t Andrea from the gallery in San Gimi mention I’d be stopping by?’

  ‘No,’ he said, folding his hands over his chest. ‘I don’t have any of my father’s work for sale. You’ve wasted your time coming out here.’

  Bel laughed. It was a light, pretty laugh, one she’d worked on over the years for doorstep moments like this. ‘You’ve got me wrong. I’m not trying to rip off you or Andrea. I’m a journalist. I’d heard about your father’s work and I wanted to write a feature about him. And then I discovered I was too late.’ Her face softened and she gave him a small, sympathetic smile. ‘I am so sorry. To have painted those paintings, he must have been a remarkable man.’

  ‘He was,’ Gabriel said. It sounded as if he begrudged her both syllables. His face remained inscrutable.

  ‘I thought it might still be possible to write something?’

  ‘There’s no point, is there? He’s gone.’

  Bel gave him a shrewd look. Reputation or money, that was the question now. She didn’t know this lad well enough to know what would get her across the door. And she wanted to be across the door before she dropped the bombshell of what she really knew about him and his father. ‘It would enhance his reputation,’ she said. ‘Make sure his name was established. And that would obviously increase the value of his work too.’

  ‘I’m not interested in publicity.’ He moved backwards, the door start
ing to inch closed.

  Time to throw the dice. ‘I can see why that might be, Adam.’ She’d hit home, judging by the swift spasm of shock that passed across his features. ‘You see, I know a lot more than I told Andrea. Enough to write a story, that’s for sure. Do you want to talk about it? Or shall I just go away and write what I know without you having any say in how the world sees you and your dad?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said.

  Bel had seen enough bluster in her time to recognize it for what it was. ‘Oh, please,’ she said. ‘Don’t waste my time.’ She turned and started to walk back to the car.

  ‘Wait,’ he shouted after her. ‘Look, I think you’ve got hold of the wrong end of the stick. But come in and have a glass of wine anyway.’ Bel swung round without a second’s hesitation and headed back towards him. He shrugged and gave her a puppy-dog grin. ‘It’s the least I can do, seeing as you’ve come all the way out here.’

  She followed him into the classic dim Tuscan room that served as living room, dining room and kitchen. There was even a bed recess beyond the fireplace, but instead of a narrow mattress, it housed a plasma-screen TV and a sound system that Bel would have been happy to have installed in her own home.

  A scarred and scrubbed pine table sat off to one side near the cooking range. A pack of Marlboro Lights and a disposable lighter sat next to an overflowing ashtray. Gabriel pulled out a chair for Bel on the far side, then brought over a couple of glasses and an unlabelled bottle of red wine. While his back was turned, she lifted a cigarette butt from the ashtray and slipped it into her pocket. She could leave any time now and she would have what she needed to prove whether this young man really was Adam Maclennan Grant. Gabriel settled down at the head of the table, poured the wine and raised his glass to her. ‘Cheers.’

  Bel clinked her glass against his. ‘Nice to meet you at last, Adam,’ she said.

  ‘Why do you keep calling me Adam?’ he said, apparently bewildered. He was good, she had to admit. A better dissembler than Harry, who’d never been able to stop his cheeks pinking whenever he lied. ‘My name’s Gabriel.’ He took a cigarette from the pack and lit it.

  ‘It is now,’ Bel conceded. ‘But it’s not your real name, any more than Daniel Porteous was your father’s real name.’

  He gave a half-laugh, flipping one hand in the air in a gesture of incomprehension. ‘See, this is very bizarre to me. You turn up at my house, I’ve never seen you before, and you start coming out with all this…I don’t mean to sound rude, but really, there’s no other word for it but bullshit. Like I don’t know my own name.’

  ‘I think you do know your own name. I think you know exactly what I’m talking about. Whoever your father was, Daniel Porteous wasn’t his name. And you’re not Gabriel Porteous. You’re Adam Maclennan Grant.’ Bel picked up her bag and pulled out a folder. ‘This is your mother.’ She extracted a photo of Cat Grant on her father’s yacht, head back and laughing. ‘And this is your grandfather.’ She added a publicity head shot of Brodie Grant in his early forties. She looked up and saw Gabriel’s chest rising and falling in time with his rapid and shallow breathing. ‘The resemblance is striking, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘So you found a couple of people who look a bit like me. What does that prove?’ He drew hard on his cigarette, squinting through the smoke.

  ‘Nothing, in itself. But you turned up in Italy with a man using the identity of a boy who’d died years before. The pair of you showed up not long after Adam Maclennan Grant and his mother were kidnapped. Adam’s mother died when the ransom handover went sour, but Adam vanished without trace.’

  ‘That’s pretty thin,’ Gabriel said. He wasn’t meeting her eyes now. He drained his glass and refilled it. ‘I don’t see any real connection to me and my father.’

  ‘The ransom demand was made in a very distinctive format. A poster of a puppeteer. The same poster turned up in a villa near Siena that was being squatted by a puppet troupe led by a guy called Matthias.’

  ‘You’ve lost me.’ His eyes might be focused over her shoulder but his smile was charm itself. Just like his grandfather’s.

  Bel placed a photo of Gabriel at the Boscolata party on the table. ‘Wrong answer, Adam. This is you at a party where you and your father were guests of Matthias. It ties the pair of you to a ransom demand that was made for you and your mother twenty-two years ago. Which is more than suggestive, don’t you think?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said. She recognized the stubborn line of the jaw from her encounters with Brodie Grant. Really, she could leave now and rely on the DNA to do all that was necessary. But she couldn’t help herself. The journalist’s instinct for running the game and gaining the scoop was too strong.

  ‘Of course you do. This is a great story, Adam. And I am going to write it with or without your help. But there’s more, isn’t there?’

  There was nothing friendly in the look Gabriel gave her. ‘This is bullshit. You’ve taken a couple of coincidences and built this fantasy out of them. What are you hoping to get out of it? Money from this Grant guy? Some crappy magazine story? If you’ve got any reputation at all, you’re going to destroy it if you write this.’

  Bel smiled. His feeble threats told her she had him on the run. Time to go for the throat. ‘Like I said, there’s more. You might think you’re safe, Adam, but you’re not. There’s a witness, you see…’ She left the sentence dangling.

  He crushed out his cigarette and immediately began fiddling with another. ‘A witness to what?’ There was an edge to his voice that made Bel feel she was on the right track.

  ‘You and Matthias were seen together the day before the BurEst troupe disappeared from the Villa Totti. You were at the villa with him that night. The next day, they’d all gone. And so had you.’

  ‘So what?’ He sounded angry now. ‘Even if that’s true, so what? I meet up with a friend of my father. My father, who’s just died. Next day, he leaves town with his crew. So fucking what?’

  Bel let his words hang in the air. She reached for his cigarettes and helped herself to one. ‘So there’s a bloodstain the size of a couple of litres on the kitchen floor. OK, you already know that bit.’ She sparked the lighter, the flame’s brightness revealing how much darker it had become in the short time since she’d arrived. The cigarette lit, she drew smoke into her mouth and let it trickle out of one corner. ‘What you probably don’t know is that the Italian police have launched a murder hunt.’ She tapped the cigarette pointlessly against the edge of the ashtray. ‘I think it’s time you came clean about what happened back in April.’

  Thursday 26th April 2007; Villa Totti, Tuscany

  Until the last few days of his father’s life, Gabriel Porteous hadn’t understood his closeness to the man who had brought him up single-handed. The bond between father and son had never been something he’d thought much about. If he’d been pressed, polite rather than passionate was how he’d have characterized their relationship, especially when he contrasted it with the dynamic rapport that most of his mates shared with their fathers. He put it down to Daniel’s Britishness. After all, the Brits were supposed to be uptight and reserved, weren’t they? Plus, all his mates had vast extended families, ranging vertically and horizontally through time and space. In an environment like that, you had to stake your claim or sink without trace. But Gabriel and Daniel only had each other. They didn’t have to compete for attention. So being undemonstrative was OK. Or so he told himself. Pointless to acknowledge a longing for the sort of family he could never have. Grandparents dead, the only child of only children, he was never going to be part of a clan like his mates. He’d be stoic, like his dad, accepting what couldn’t be changed. Over the years, he’d shut the door on his desire for something different, learning to bow to the inevitable and reminding himself to count the blessings that came with his solitary status.

  So when Daniel had told him about the prognosis of his cancer, Gabriel had gone into
denial. He couldn’t get his head round the thought of life without Daniel. This horrible information didn’t make sense in his vision of the world, so he simply went on with his life as if the news hadn’t been delivered. No need to come home more often. No need to snatch at every possible opportunity to spend time with Daniel. No need to talk about a future that didn’t contain his father. Because it wasn’t going to happen. Gabriel wasn’t going to be abandoned by the only family he had.

  But finally it had been impossible to ignore a reality that was bigger than his capacity for defiance. When Daniel had phoned him from the Policlinico Le Scotte and said in a voice weaker than a whisper that he needed Gabriel to be there, the truth had hit him with the force of a sandbag to the back of the neck. Those final days at his father’s bedside had been excruciating for Gabriel, not least because he hadn’t allowed himself to prepare for them.

  It was too late for the conversation Gabriel finally craved, but in one of his lucid moments, Daniel had told him that Matthias was keeping a letter for him. He could give Gabriel no sense of what the letter contained, only that it was important. It was, Gabriel thought, typical of his father the artist to communicate on paper rather than face to face. He’d given his instructions for his funeral previously in an email. A private service prearranged and paid for in advance in a small but perfect Renaissance church in Florence, Gabriel alone to see him to his grave in an undistinguished cemetery on the western fringes of the city. Daniel had attached an MP3 file of Gesualdo’s Tenebrae Responsories for his son to upload to his iPod and listen to on the day of his burial. The choice of music puzzled Gabriel; his father always listened to music while he painted, but never anything like this. But there was no explanation for the choice of music. Just another mystery, like the letter left with Matthias.

  Gabriel had planned to visit Matthias at the dilapidated villa near Siena once the first acerbity of his grief had passed. But when he emerged from the graveyard, the puppeteer had been waiting for him. Matthias and his partner Ursula had been the nearest to an uncle and aunt that Gabriel had known. They’d always been part of his life, even if they’d never stayed in one place long enough for him to grow familiar with it. They hadn’t exactly been emotionally accessible either; Matthias was too wrapped up in himself and Ursula too wrapped up in Matthias. But he’d spent childhood holidays with them while his father went off for a couple of weeks on his own. Gabriel would end the holidays with suntanned skin, wild hair and skinned knees; Daniel would return with a satchel bursting with new work from further afield: Greece, Yugoslavia, Spain, North Africa. Gabriel was always pleased to see his father, but his delight was tempered by having to say goodbye to the light touch of Ursula and Matthias’s childcare.