The Power of One

by Jane A. Adams

  Mac sensed something odd behind the question. He glanced at Kendal looking for a clue as to what.

  ‘Abe here has never heard of anyone called Hale,’ he said.

  Mac absorbed that. ‘So who the hell is he?’ he asked.

  Abe shrugged. ‘Beats me,’ he said. ‘Complex business you seem to have gotten into. All I do know is, your Superintendent Aims believed his credentials and gave him full access.’

  That sounded like Aims, Mac thought. Not that the man was stupid; just a little too ready to be overwhelmed by title for Mac’s taste. ‘Did anyone think to check him out?’

  ‘Not as easy as it might sound,’ Kendal pointed out. ‘Apparently Aims called the Home Office but the wheels of enquiry turn slowly. It’s not like you can phone someone and say, look, we have one of your spooks here, can you tell me if he’s the real deal or some Walter Mitty wannabe.’

  ‘And I’m afraid when I got involved, it seemed to just confirm this Hale’s story. Aims just assumed we were part of the same team.’

  Mac sat down and pulled his coffee mug towards him, then, finding it empty, pushed it hopefully in Kendal’s direction. ‘And I suppose you’re for real,’ he said.

  ‘I can give you a number, you can check me out.’

  ‘No, what I can do is call someone who says of course this man is one of ours. They could be anyone; you could be anyone. You see my problem.’

  ‘I see your problem.’

  ‘And this Hale, no chance he could just be from another department? Some other branch of your secret society. Different set of handshakes?’

  ‘It’s possible, of course, but no. Hale is a phoney. A well-informed, well-prepared phoney but still not the real thing.’

  ‘He’s a man with resources though,’ Mac said. ‘And that’s worrying.’

  ‘No hits on his fingerprints?’ Kendal asked hopefully.

  Mac shook his head. ‘CSI dusted everything that didn’t move. Nothing but Paul’s prints and those of his brother-and sister-in-law and a couple of unknowns. One partial on the pill packet that CSI think matches others found in the flat and so is probably the girlfriend, but they noted that they only found a half-dozen in total attributable. I have to think that the relationship was over and Paul had cleaned since she left. Unknown prints on the leather chair, that almost certainly belong to Hale, but that gets us no further.’

  Kendal had taken the hint and refilled his mug. Mac sipped gratefully, lack of sleep the night before making him feel sluggish and irritable. ‘It would help, of course, if we knew why your people were involved with Paul de Freitas?’

  Abe Jackson laughed. ‘Perhaps it would,’ he said. ‘Perhaps not. But that leads me neatly on to my next point. Despite Hale’s attempts to claim him, we lost a man too on that boat, so you can expect my company, Mac. On the upside, you can also expect use of our resources.’

  ‘And on the downside?’

  ‘You mean, other than having me around?’ Abe laughed at his own joke. ‘On the downside, while we would never presume to tell you what not to investigate and while, obviously, it would look really bad on the publicity front if you didn’t throw all you could in terms of manpower into investigating this murder, be warned. There are boundaries here which you will not cross.’

  ‘Boundaries?’ Kendal was irritated.

  ‘Two men are dead, Inspector Kendal, and we have reason to believe that they are dead because of work Paul was doing for us. Work which, shall we say, other parties would like to have got their hands on. By all means, investigate. Be seen to be doing all you’d usually be doing, but be aware, and in this your superiors will back me all the way, this is our game and you will play it by our rules. If I say back off, you don’t argue, you just ask me how far.’

  SEVENTEEN

  Lydia had left the answerphone on since the day of Paul’s death. There had been calls to offer condolence, some of which she had returned and many of which she had left in the capable – nay, eager – hands of Margaret Simms. Calls from business associates, shocked by the news or reluctantly posing practical problems, Edward had dealt with and then set someone from the factory on to the task of fielding such enquiries. Then there were calls from journalists, which she had ignored, and from the police which she had reluctantly responded to only if they were repeated often enough to become insistent.

  They had kept the gates closed and visitors who knew them well had either used the cliff path or parked at the next-door farm and walked back across the field and then through the small gate at the rear, kept locked unless they phoned in advance. Lydia was relieved that so far no one had thought to come across the lawn from the cliff but she figured it was just a matter of time.

  She wanted to leave, now before things got worse. ‘How worse?’ Edward had queried and she wasn’t sure what to say. ‘What if the journalists find the back way in? What if they come?’ That mysterious ‘they’ that had taken Paul’s life. She was sure she had seen someone watching the house.

  Most frightening though, were the phone calls that left no message. She wasn’t sure why these disturbed her so much more than those which had previously threatened; perhaps the length of time the caller waited before hanging up. The utter silence. The feeling that they were waiting for her to lose her nerve and grab the phone, yell at whoever was on the other end, and in doing so demonstrate that they were in control and not Lydia, not Edward.

  Twice she had disconnected it altogether arguing that anyone they actually wanted to talk to could reach them by mobile. Twice, she had found the line plugged back in, though both Edward and Margaret denied having done so.

  Lydia wondered if she was going slowly mad.

  The phone rang again as she was passing through the hall. A journalist this time, though she had missed the start of the message and did not know where from. He expressed condolence and the wish for an interview or comments. He rang off just as she started up the stairs.

  The phone rang again and Lydia glared at it, in half a mind to just flip it off the hook and leave it there. The answerphone delivered its usual denial that anyone was home and then Lydia froze. The voice leaving the message was Paul’s. Unmistakeably Paul’s.

  Lydia screamed and didn’t stop screaming until Edward had half carried her into the Big Room and thrust a glass of brandy into her shaking hands.

  ‘Drink,’ he said. ‘Lydia, what the hell?’

  She turned on him, fierce now. ‘Listen to the message. Just go and listen to the damned message.’

  Reluctantly, Edward returned to the hall. He paused in the doorway, looking back at his wife and she rose, came to join him, took his hand. He keyed the machine to play.

  ‘Oh my God.’

  Paul’s voice, tinny and unclear, as though this was a re-recording of a poor recording, but unmistakeable. Equally unmistakeable was that he was terrified.

  ‘Ian?’ Paul called out. ‘What the hell is going on?’ Then the voice was drowned out by an explosion of sound that even Lydia could recognise was a gunshot. ‘What? Oh no, no!’ A second shot and then silence, then the sound of a man breathing hard, gasping as though in pain. Lydia lashed out, sending the machine spinning from the telephone table and across the parquet floor of the hall.

  ‘We’ve got to get out of here. Now. Edward, we’ve got to go.’ Her voice cracked, verging on hysteria. Her husband didn’t argue. Moments later, in a locked car, willing the gates to open faster than they were ever designed to do, they were fleeing their home.

  EIGHTEEN

  ‘Rina, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know where else to go. We just drove here.’

  It had taken a while to coax from the de Freitas’s exactly what had terrified them so much and longer spent trying to convince them that they should call the police; Mac in particular.

  ‘We can’t.’ Edward was as adamant as his wife. ‘Rina, one of the last things Paul said was that he no longer knew who to trust. That even the authorities were unreliable. He said he was worried, that he felt he was in dan
ger and he was right, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Did he say why he felt so threatened?’

  Edward shook his head. ‘He’d taken on some outside work, some special project, that’s all I know. It was something he did from time to time, development work for other companies. It increased our turnover and more important, added to our reputation.’

  ‘But always before, he’d told us what he was doing,’ Lydia objected. ‘Rina, I’m so scared. Before Paul died we were getting these phone calls, threatening calls, saying Paul was going to die if he didn’t deliver. Deliver what, I don’t know and he wouldn’t tell us. Then afterward, just silence. The phone would ring and then there was nothing. Then this!’ She got up, suddenly. ‘We shouldn’t have come here. What if they come after us here? Oh Rina I’m so …’

  ‘Sit down,’ Rina said firmly. ‘Drink your tea. We’ve dealt with worse, believe me. Now. What we need to do is find you a safe place to lie low for a while and I think I know just the spot.’

  ‘We came away with nothing,’ Edward said. ‘We can’t go to a hotel. We can’t …’

  ‘That can be sorted,’ Rina told him stoutly. ‘Tim and I will go and fetch you some things and bring them back here. Then we’ll need some camping equipment and spare blankets and the like. I’m not sure the power is connected at the place I have in mind, but I believe it has its own water supply and …’

  ‘I know where we can borrow a generator,’ Tim added. ‘You’re thinking about the farm, aren’t you, Rina?’

  She nodded. ‘Middle of nowhere, I’m afraid, but all the better for that,’ she told the de Freitas’s. ‘And the next thing is to organise some security. If we’re not trusting the regular authorities then we must fall back on our own resources.’

  ‘Fitch?’ Tim said.

  ‘Fitch,’ Rina agreed.

  They left Lydia and Edward to the tender ministrations of the rest of the family. The Montmorency twins could be relied upon to keep up the supplies of tea and cake and the Peters sisters were already playing the piano by the time Rina and Tim left.

  ‘You sure they’ll be all right,’ Tim asked doubtfully. ‘Our lot can be a bit, well, full on.’

  Rina nodded. ‘But can you think of anything more likely to take their minds off current troubles,’ she said. ‘An afternoon being serenaded by Eliza and Bethany and force-fed tea and sympathy by Steven and Matthew will put everything back into perspective, won’t it.’

  Tim growled something about them being glad to escape at the end of it. ‘We should tell Mac,’ he added.

  ‘And we will, but not yet. If Lydia and Edward think we’ve involved the police they might well do something silly. At the moment, we can control the situation. We will know where they are and that they’re safe. Neither of them knows Mac like we do; they have absolutely no reason to trust him.’

  It was a mark of their panic that the de Freitas’s had not shut the gate after leaving. Neither, Rina found, had they secured the door.

  The gate she could just about understand, but as the door was fitted with a Yale lock, all they had to do was to slam it behind them. It seemed to Rina unlikely that they would neglect such a simple and automatic action.

  ‘I don’t think we’re the first to get here, Tim. Keep your eyes open just in case.’

  Tim glanced warily around. The house was silent and it felt empty and already abandoned.

  ‘They said the message came through on the hall phone,’ he queried. ‘Rina, you’ve been here before. Where would that be?’

  She pointed to a small table at the foot of the stairs. ‘There,’ she said. ‘Next to the phone point. Lydia said she knocked it off, in which case I’d expect to see it on the floor, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘I think we might have noticed that,’ Tim said. He knelt down and picked a sliver of plastic from the floor. ‘A green phone, was it?’

  ‘Yes, sort of olivy green. One of those digital answerphone things.’

  Tim showed her the tiny splinter he had found. ‘I suggest we get what we came for and leave,’ he said. ‘Just in case our visitors come back. And before you suggest it, no, I don’t think it would be quicker if we split up. I’ve watched too many horror films to fall for that one.’

  Rina chuckled but he could hear that she too was shaken. They found Lydia’s bag on the kitchen table where she had said it would be. Rina glanced inside. Phone, purse, make-up. Assorted till receipts and tissues. If it had been searched Rina didn’t think she would be able to tell. Upstairs they packed clothes enough to last about a week, hoping that by that time the situation would either have been resolved or would have been handed on to someone else. ‘It feels strange, going through someone else’s drawers,’ Tim said. ‘I’d hate to think of someone doing this for me.’

  Rina cast him a sideways glance.

  ‘And not just because mine are always such a mess,’ he retorted. ‘I have a lot more to store than Edward de Freitas and a lot less room in which to do it.’

  ‘Yes, he is a little lacking in the magical props department,’ Rina agreed. ‘To say nothing of the odd collection of militaria and the vast library you manage to cram on to those poor shelves.’

  Rina glanced around. ‘I think we have everything,’ she said. ‘I’d quite like to leave now, Tim, if you don’t mind.’

  Tim held up a hand signalling quiet. Rina opened her mouth to speak and then thought better of it. ‘Did you hear that?’ he whispered. ‘It sounded like a door opening.’

  ‘Mrs Simms?’ Rina wondered.

  ‘Lydia said she wasn’t in today.’

  Hefting the bags and hoping they wouldn’t have to run with them, they crept to the top of the stairs and Tim risked a quick glance down. He saw nothing but the sound of someone walking across the parquet flooring of the hall was unmistakeable. Tim wished he’d had the foresight to park the car elsewhere. Wished even harder as he heard the footsteps pause and, risking another quick glance down the stairs, saw a shadow cast on the polished floor and knew that the intruder would have seen it on the drive.

  He looked back at Rina, she had lifted the holdall into her arms, ready to make a run for it if that’s what they had to do. Tim reached into his pocket and took out the keys to his car. Cursing softly, he heard the figure in the hall start to move again, more cautiously this time but coming towards the stairs.

  Just hope he’s on his own, Tim thought. He moved back to stand beside Rina, trying to keep as much of the stairway in his sight as he could without being seen. Hoped Rina would be as good at catching on and taking his lead as Tim was in picking up hers. He waited, ears straining, breathing through his mouth to extend his hearing even by the smallest degree, lifted the suitcase to waist height and, as the figure of a man came into view, threw it with all the force he could muster directly at him. With a muffled cry the figure tumbled back down the stairs and Tim followed, Rina on his heels.

  Encumbered by the holdall she took action, dropped the bag down over the banister and into the entrance hall. It landed with a dull splat upon the wooden floor. Then she hurtled after Tim.

  The man had begun to rise as Tim leapt from the last steps. He seized the only weapon that came to hand; the little table that had once supported the phone. Tim grabbed it by the legs and as the man began to rise, Tim swung it with full force at his head. As the man went down for a second time they heard a shout from the back of the house.

  Tim swore, grabbed the suitcase and followed Rina who had retrieved the holdall and was now storming through the door.

  Pressing the key fob, Tim unlocked the car and Rina bundled the holdall inside, throwing herself after it and down on to the back seat. Tim threw the case into the car and then himself, locked the doors and shoved the key into the ignition. He swung the car about in a swirl of gravel, praying that the men in the house had no means of closing the gates before he could reach them.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Will be if you keep your foot down,’ Rina urged from the back seat.


  ‘Shit! Keep your head low, Rina.’ Tim, glancing in the mirror, could see the gun aimed directly at his rear screen. He swerved wildly, jinking as well as it is possible to jink in an ageing estate car, heard the shot but not the expected shattering of glass. Clipping the wing mirror as he practically threw the vehicle through the gate he turned sharp right, away from the house. Away from Frantham.

  He was laughing by the time Rina sat up, straightened herself out and sedately fastened her seatbelt.

  ‘Funny is it?’

  ‘Oh, don’t mind me. Just a hissy fit. I’m getting used to facing down men with guns. It seems to have happened quite a bit this year. And me, the only member of my blessed family that refused to go in the army!’

  ‘Where are we going?’ Rina asked.

  ‘I thought I’d take a bit of a detour. Get back on to the Honiton Road as fast as I can and take the back way back home. I’m hoping they didn’t get too good a look at our license plate.’

  ‘Did you get a good look at them?’

  Tim shuddered. ‘At the gun, yes. At the man holding it, I’m not too sure. I’ll be in need of Matthew’s tender ministrations I think before I can get it clear in my head.’ He sobered, the full realisation of the situation coming home to him as the adrenaline receded. ‘This is serious, Rina,’ Tim said. ‘Much more than we can handle on our own.’

  NINETEEN

  By the time they reached Frantham, Tim had called in reinforcements. It would take their friend, Fitch, a few hours to get to them from Manchester, but he sounded happy to be summoned. Tim said they’d brief him properly when he arrived.

  ‘Good to have willing friends,’ he said. The Duggans had sent their love, and Joy announced her intention to visit once the crisis was over, which had cheered Tim up no end. Joy Duggan, now just turned twenty years old, had come into their lives rather precipitously earlier that year when her brother had been murdered and she had been kidnapped. Tim, while horribly aware that she was twelve years his junior, really had quite a thing for her, as Bethany would have said, and, from what Rina had seen, the feelings were reciprocated. And, after all, Rina thought as she watched Tim’s expression soften at the thought of Joy, the one thing stopping them from taking things further was easily fixed by waiting a year or two.