Disorder (Sam Keddie thriller series Book 1)

by Paddy Magrane

  Chapter 9

  King’s Cross, London

  The front page headline chilled Sam’s blood.

  SCOTT ‘KILLED HIMSELF’

  The newspaper lay next to him on the bed. Sam had booked into a grimy bed & breakfast off the Euston Road, a place of paper-thin walls, dirty sheets and shared bathrooms. Perfect for a man who, for now, needed to disappear below the radar.

  The room was paid for from the wad of cash he’d withdrawn over the counter at his local bank, an amount he hoped would tide him over and remove the need for a visit to a cashpoint. A precaution, he had told himself at the time, though he could see he was already acting like a paranoid, hunted man.

  He wanted to ignore the newspaper, to throw it away, but he couldn’t. He re-read the article below the headline.

  According to a police ‘source’ who’d been present at the autopsy, Scott had ‘allegedly’ overdosed on Co-proxamol. The suicide assertion might have been couched in careful language but Sam suspected the paper wouldn’t have dared talk of the presence of Co-proxamol had it not been true. He hoped to God Scott’s family had been told in advance and not read it first in this rag.

  As to why Scott might have done this, the journalist had no concrete theory but clearly enjoyed offering up his ideas. He mentioned Wendy Scott’s Motor Neurone Disease which had, according to ‘friends of the Scotts’, put unbearable strains on family life. He also mentioned the Minister’s ‘disappointment’ at being passed over for higher office in recent Cabinet re-shuffles, despite his close friendship with the PM.

  Sam cast the paper aside in disgust. Lives, as he knew all too well, were far more subtle and complicated, yet newspapers like this felt it was their God-given right to publish utterly poisonous bullshit and pass it off as fact.

  He turned to the other items on the bed, his case notes, hoping he’d find a better understanding of why Scott had ended his life – and why he was being pursued so intently.

  But as he re-read the notes, he realised that there was nothing in them that provided even the most meagre of leads. The main problem was Scott’s obvious caution, fuelled by paranoia, which meant he was determined to remain as opaque as possible. There was the mention of him having done ‘something terrible’ and of course his dream, the recalling of which produced such a physical reaction. Scott running through a high-walled maze, looking for Hank. The maze was sure to be a metaphor for his own state, a place from which he couldn’t escape. But who was Hank? Without more knowledge of the Minister, it was impossible to make any sense of it.

  One over-riding, toxic thought kept spinning round Sam’s head. Had Scott, by the time he left, already decided to kill himself? And if so, what had prompted that decision? His interventions? No, uncomfortable though Sam felt about his brief time with Scott, he simply couldn’t accept that. What about the Government employee’s arrival – something that seemed to affect Scott’s mood more than anything else?

  Another thought cast a long shadow over the room. Had it really been suicide? Sam remembered the weapons inspector, Dr David Kelly, whose death, despite official findings, was still the subject of endless speculation on the web.

  Sam shook the thought from his head. Right now, he had to build on what he knew, rather than enter a world of supposition. If he was to have any hope of removing the threat that hung over him, he urgently needed answers. But who could he turn to?

  His eye drifted back to the newspaper. And it was then that he realised there was someone he could contact. Someone who, like him, would be seeking answers of their own.

  Chapter 10

  Sussex

  The Scott family home was not hard to find. Mention of the farmhouse in Sussex had been in the media repeatedly. A quick surf in an internet café soon coughed up the relevant information.

  Just over an hour later, Sam’s train pulled into Haywards Heath, the town that was, according to the map he’d consulted at Victoria, nearest the Scotts’ hamlet. Outside the station, he gave his destination to a minicab driver.

  ‘You’re the sixth today,’ the man said. ‘Journalist, are you?’

  Sam climbed in the back. ‘No,’ he said, with a vehemence that surprised him. ‘I’m visiting family.’

  Fifteen minutes later, the cab was heading down a narrow lane towards the hamlet. As it came into view – a church, pub and cluster of old cottages – Sam realised that there was no need for further directions. Just ahead there were a number of large vans crowned with satellite dishes and, standing by them, a throng of reporters. Despite the PM’s plea for privacy, it was clear the media still considered Eleanor and her mother fair game.

  He now knew the location of the Scott house, but getting to it was still going to be a problem. He’d have to get past all the reporters and photographers, causing them excitement and drawing attention to himself in a way that was simply not sensible. Maybe, he thought, he could bypass the track and reach the house on foot across country.

  He asked the driver to stop outside a small terrace, paid, and then waited for the car to pull away, before moving at a pace back up the lane on the opposite side to the gathered press.

  Once past them, he crossed back over. A steep hedge bordered the edge of the lane, blocking his view of the landscape below. He needed a gap to get through if he was to stand any chance of reaching the Scotts’ house.

  A little further on there was a farm gate. Sam paused to plan his next move. Immediately ahead was a ploughed field, the ground large lumps of dried, cracked earth after several weeks without rain. The field dropped down to a small copse. There was no sign of the house but he could make out, just beyond the trees, a little smoke rising. It had to be a chimney.

  He vaulted the gate and began moving across the field. He suddenly felt exposed, despite being unaware of anyone watching him.

  It took a couple of minutes before he was at the edge of the copse. It was ringed by wooden posts linked by stretches of barbed wire. As he attempted to climb over it, his foot slid. He snagged his jeans and cursed under his breath.

  Sam moved on through the wood, stumbling over the uneven ground. The trees were still in leaf and the grey light of a sunless day was soon blocked out by the canopy above. He tripped over a fallen branch covered in vegetation and staggered forward, swearing again.

  Soon afterwards the light increased and he could see that he was coming to a clearing. This one wasn’t marked by a barbed wire fence. The woods simply ended, opening on to a stretch of lawn that ran alongside a gravel drive leading to a large stone farmhouse and a number of outbuildings. Outside the house were two vehicles – a people carrier and a Mini Cooper.

  Sam was sure that this was the Scott family home. He now had to consider his next move. Did he simply march up to the front door?

  His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a twig snapping underfoot. He was about to look behind when he heard a woman’s voice.

  ‘Move an inch and I’ll blow your bloody head off.’

  Chapter 11

  Sussex

  ‘If you are what you say you are – a therapist – then you’ll know that, as a recently bereaved daughter, I’m out of my mind with grief; capable of acting in ways that I cannot be held responsible for.’

  Looking at the woman before him – her eyes blazing with anger, hands wrapped tightly around a shotgun – Sam had no doubt she was telling the truth. ‘I am a therapist,’ he repeated. ‘Your father’s therapist.’

  ‘Prove it,’ said Eleanor Scott.

  They were standing in one of the farm outbuildings, an old stable block with a floor strewn with straw, the air tainted with the smell of manure. Eleanor Scott wore an over-sized overcoat – perhaps, thought Sam, her father’s, and an attempt by her to stay close to him. Above this dense, protective layer her face, despite raging eyes, seemed fragile and delicate – pale skin etched with fatigue and sadness.

  ‘He came to see me for a session the day before he died,’ said Sam, immediately regretting his choice of words.r />
  Eleanor said nothing, which made Sam even more edgy. Right now, she had every reason to hate him. He briefly considered mentioning what Scott had said about her, but as quickly decided against it.

  ‘All I can say is that he looked a shadow of the man I knew from the media. He talked about something that was haunting him day and night.’

  The shotgun dropped a fraction.

  ‘Your father talked about being in a deep pit – one he was never going to get out of.’

  Eleanor’s eyes had begun to well. Sam knew what he needed to say now to finally remove the threat of a shotgun being fired into his stomach. It was cheap but, Sam was confident, guaranteed to wrench at the heart of a bereaved daughter.

  ‘He was frightened.’

  Eleanor was crying now and the shotgun hung limply by her side.

  ‘I’m so sorry about your father,’ Sam said. ‘I’m also sorry for marching on to your property like this. But I couldn’t think of any other way to get in contact with you. I knew you wouldn’t talk to me on the phone in case you thought I was some prying journalist.’

  Eleanor looked up, her eyes wet with tears. ‘So why have you come?’

  ‘Something about your father’s death doesn’t add up,’ said Sam. ‘And I have to find out what.’

  Chapter 12

  Sussex

  They were sitting at the kitchen table, the surface scattered with unopened mail and piles of newspapers. Clearly Eleanor had been ploughing through them, reading both the good and bad stuff about her father. It was understandable. As long as he continued to be talked about, he was alive to her.

  Around them, the room looked like it hadn’t been cleaned for days, with muddy boot prints across the floor and a sink stacked with unwashed plates and pans. But the place had an undeniably homely feel to it. A dog – an elderly chocolate Labrador – was curled up in front of an Aga. Photos of Scott, Eleanor and Wendy in happier days – a fading snap of a family holiday from Eleanor’s teenage years, the three of them in swimming costumes on an empty beach; another of Eleanor in mortar board and gown flanked by her grinning father – were pinned to a cork board.

  Sam couldn’t help but contrast this domestic scene with the home of his childhood, a sterile, cold house in an isolated rural spot in Wiltshire. In the absence of his father, who’d died shortly after he was born, Sam’s mother, a scientist who worked at the MoD, dictated life for her only child. The home was wholly lacking in human touches, or warmth of any kind. It was a building he had revisited countless times in his own therapy – and one which he hoped never to see again.

  He could see Wendy Scott, the Minister’s widow, through an open doorway. She was sitting in what looked like a specially adapted armchair and a carer was helping her to drink from a beaker with a spout.

  ‘Keep your voice down, by the way’ said Eleanor, her tone still brittle. ‘Mum may look gaga but she’s not – and I don’t want her hearing what you say.’

  Eleanor took a sip of her coffee. She was, Sam reckoned, in her early thirties, slender with a mass of unbrushed, shoulder-length brown hair. She was attractive, in an unconventional way, with a trace of freckles across the smooth skin of her cheeks and straight nose, and a dimple beneath her full mouth. Tired eyes – the irises a deep, dark brown – flickered inquisitively in his direction. Sam noticed – as he frequently did of his clients – that at the end of Eleanor’s long fingers, the nails were bitten and the skin raw.

  Things had moved on a great deal since their initial meeting. The shotgun – Sam guessed it might never have been loaded, but he hadn’t asked – was now lying in an entrance porch and Eleanor had also made him a coffee. But he knew he could still not afford to say one wrong word. She was fragile. He could not distress her any more. So while he’d mentioned her father being haunted by something, he had not revealed the other telling phrase – Scott saying that he’d ‘done something terrible’. He also knew any mention of what Scott had said about his family – ‘Wendy’s all but lost to me. And I can’t burden Eleanor with this. She wouldn’t understand.’ – was out of the question. This reluctance was not out of deference to his former client – he was already betraying him – but because he knew this information could lead to poisonous, destructive assumptions on Eleanor’s part. And that wouldn’t help him either. The brutal truth was, he needed Eleanor to be thinking clearly.

  No, the only way forward – selfish though it now felt – was to keep the notes to himself and convince her, in the gentlest, most sensitive way possible, that it was worth her getting involved in his search for the truth.

  He started by telling her how, during his last session, her father had been spooked by the sight of a man in the street outside and how his mood had dramatically altered afterwards, going from fear to a calm resignation.

  ‘Of what?’ asked Eleanor.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Sam. ‘All I know is that the next day, the same man who appeared in the street turned up at my house to tell me your father had committed suicide.’

  Sam paused, groaning inwardly, hardly believing that he’d been so tactless.

  ‘It’s alright,’ said Eleanor. ‘We’ve seen the autopsy report – and the papers.’

  ‘Right,’ said Sam, struggling to regain his flow. ‘Anyhow, this man then asked me to tell him what your father had said about his work.’

  ‘I’m assuming you told him to piss off,’ Eleanor said.

  ‘After a fashion,’ said Sam. ‘I didn’t like or trust the man one bit. And there was no way I was telling a stranger what a client had told me in confidence. But he was insistent and, had another client not arrived, I think he would have happily beaten me to a pulp to get what he wanted.’

  Eleanor leaned forward in her seat. ‘So then what?’

  ‘He stormed out. But later on someone else tried to break into my place and steal your father’s case notes. When that failed, the same man chased me through a local cemetery with a knife in his hand. Had there not been people around, he’d have got what he wanted.’

  Eleanor combed a hand through her thick hair. ‘So what you’re saying is, these men suspect that you know something about my father – something they deem explosive enough to steal or even kill for.’

  Sam nodded.

  ‘But you don’t.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘So you want my help to work out what this incendiary secret is.’

  ‘I know you have your own grief to work through, Eleanor. I also know I’m trampling all over it by marching in here today. But I just wonder whether we can help each other.’

  Eleanor’s head dipped. He’d upset her. He knew it. When she looked up she was crying. But what came out of her mouth was not what he expected.

  Eleanor turned to look at her mother in the room behind them. Her voice then dropped. ‘Most widows in my mother’s state, with maybe a year to live – two at best – would have given up with this news. But not her. She’s found a new appetite for life. She’s eating and drinking more.’ She leaned forward, as if afraid her words were still carrying into the other room. ‘I know why,’ she said. ‘She’s angry. Angry with my father possibly, but more likely with the Government for putting Dad under unbearable stress. That’s how she’s making sense of it all.’ She paused, looking out of the window at an indeterminate point.

  ‘But you’re not sure?’

  ‘No,’ she said, her eyes returning to the room. ‘I think there’s something else. I mean, I know he was under stress, but I don’t think that unduly affected him. He knew what he’d signed up to.’

  She raised her fingers into an arch and pressed them to her lips. ‘Dad was such a steady man. Not always the most expressive emotionally, but he was always consistently affectionate towards me and Mum. He’d get angry of course – who doesn’t? Normally it was about bullshit in the media, unfair jibes from the Opposition or injustices in the rest of the world, particularly those beyond the reach of his brief.’

  She’d begun gesticulating
with her hands, but now they came to rest on the table. ‘He got mad about Mum’s illness too, really mad. But then, despite the pain underneath, he dealt with it in a calm, measured way. What I’m trying to say is that he’d get affected by stuff you’d expect anyone to be affected by, but otherwise it was like he had a really even keel. Until recently, that is.’

  ‘Something changed.’

  ‘A couple of months back, he began acting differently, out of character I guess. This might sound odd, but he seemed to be unusually happy.’

  ‘Most of my clients would give their right arm to be described that way, but I think I know what you mean. As if he were on a high.’

  ‘Exactly. And I’d seen enough people in his state to know what was happening.’

  ‘Which was?’

  Her voice became even quieter. ‘He was in love.’

  ‘With another woman.’

  ‘Yeah. We all knew of politicians whose marriages had been destroyed by life in the Commons – the long hours, all that time away from home. But theirs had survived. They had a bond. They loved each other.’ She sighed. ‘Or at least they had. Her illness seemed to change all that.’ She smiled at a memory. ‘They’d always been great communicators. If you could have heard the conversations around this table. They were always talking – about politics, the arts, all sorts of stuff. I remember one debate that went on all night, about Hitchcock.’ She smiled. ‘Mum said he was a misogynist but Dad, who was a massive fan, defended him to the hilt.’ Eleanor’s face darkened. ‘Her disease shut all that down. And he seemed to really miss that regular communication with her. But just when I thought it was beginning to take its toll, he changed.’