By the Light of a Lie (Thane & Calder Book 1)

by Marjorie Orr

  ‘There’s a magpie,’ Herk remarked casually, behind her. ‘On its own.’

  She turned to grab him tightly by the shoulders and said desperately: ‘He says my father wasn’t guilty. He died in prison for nothing. What am I going to do?’

  Her anguished tone caused him to blink. Releasing him, she started to stride up and down the room, frowning to herself. Herk perched in a corner of the window seat.

  Fifteen minutes later Harrister came in with a tray of coffee mugs. He put it on the table and said quietly: ‘That’s it, I’m afraid. He’s gone.’

  Only a considerable effort stopped Tire swearing. Standing with her back to him, she replied through gritted teeth, her voice crackling between anger and forced politeness. ‘Did you know what he was going to say to me?’

  ‘No,’ he said, drawing out the vowel. He hesitated. ‘But I may be able to find out more when I get into his papers.’

  ‘Could you?’ she said agitatedly.

  He nodded. ‘It’ll take a few weeks. I have a good deal to clear up first.’

  ‘So have we,’ Herk remarked abruptly, standing up.

  ‘You’re not still after Stone, are you?’ Harrister asked distractedly, his eyes narrowing. ‘I really would watch your step there.’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ Herk muttered sourly, scuffing one boot on top of the other.

  ‘You found out about that reporter?’ Harrister’s interested tone caught Tire’s attention.

  ‘Yup, got his notebooks,’ she said, examining his face for a reaction. ‘And two of Harman Stone’s heavies nearly wiped us out in Spain,’ she added for good measure.

  ‘Now, look,’ he said, swinging round to face her directly, ‘you really ought to leave this to the professionals.’

  ‘Fat lot of good they’ve done,’ she exclaimed. ‘The Stones have clearly been running amok for years and no one’s done bugger all about them.’

  He had the grace to look shamefaced, saying: ‘Paul Stone has always cultivated the right people, politicians and business leaders. He’s been very astute. He protects his son, who is much more questionable.’

  Herk grunted. She pursed her lips, reflecting on what to say next. ‘My information is that Senior is descending into madness.’

  ‘That’s not good.’ Harrister laid down his coffee mug, looking concerned. ‘You really can’t go up against them on your own.’ He tilted his head and added: ‘Hens always lose against a fox.’

  Herk chortled and Tire smiled acidly. ‘So what are you going to do to help? Bring in the hounds?’

  ‘I really don’t have time for this,’ he said edgily. ‘There’s too much else going on. But you’ve got ten minutes to tell me what you’ve found out before the doctor comes.’

  They sat round the table while Tire outlined what she knew. Erica’s death, Greengate in prison, her flat under surveillance, their near miss in Spain, Nathon’s worries about Stone’s drug testing, suspicions about Harman trying to kill off his half-brother Louis, his birth name in France. Harrister listened attentively, running his hand occasionally through his hair and stroking his cheek thoughtfully.

  When she had finished, he said: ‘Well, we could get Paul Stone for falsifying information on his passport if that last bit is true. And that’s about it, unless we get proof about the drug testing or any of the deaths. What are you doing next?’

  ‘Nathon’s the best bet for information at the moment,’ she said. ‘I remind him of his wife and he drinks, so I should get more out of him. We’re on a flying visit to California this week to a party where he’ll be.’

  Harrister frowned. ‘This must be costing you a fortune.’

  She shrugged. ‘I’ll get it back and more if I can expose him. Anyway, I’m doing this for Erica.’ She threw one end of her scarf over her shoulder and looked at him sideways. ‘We’ve got some info on his business finances from years back but haven’t gone into it yet. Is that angle worth pursuing?’

  ‘Maybe,’ he said noncommittally, and stopped as the doorbell rang. Standing up, he said in a more definite tone: ‘Probably.’

  For a moment he looked flustered, and she could see his grief surfacing. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’ll have to go. Here’s my card with my private mobile on it. Keep in touch and if I find out anything about your father I’ll let you know. Can you let yourselves out?’

  Suddenly desperate for a cigarette, she grabbed her bag and was heading out of the door when Herk said: ‘What’s that?’

  She turned to see him staring out of the window. Heaving a noisy sigh she walked over to him, followed his eye line and said snappily: ‘You and your bloody birds. It’s another magpie.’

  ‘No, it’s not,’ he said, tugging at her elbow to hold her beside him. ‘There’s red on its neck and under its tail.’

  The bird, perched on the trunk of a tall beech tree at the far end of the lawn, obligingly spread its wings, displaying horizontal black and white stripes with a flash of scarlet underneath.

  ‘Fancy,’ she said, ‘you’re right. It’s a greater spotted woodpecker. And before you ask – it’s a bird of prophecy. Peck. Peck. It warns you about what’s coming soon. Now let’s go.’

  CHAPTER 43

  A day to recuperate, catch up on sleep, read, research, sort out office clutter and slow the world to a more manageable pace was not working. Tire’s dreams were filled with dead bodies being thrown around a circular room, propelled outwards as the entire edifice spun at speed. She was on a motorbike, riding fast round the vertical metal perimeter, ducking and weaving to avoid the random debris, only the momentum of forward movement preventing her from careering down into a bottomless pit.

  These were old nightmares that only surfaced when she was seriously overstretched. In odd panicked moments she considered giving up her hunt of Paul Stone. She knew it was turning into an obsession and clouding her judgement. Maybe Harrister was right. Don’t pick fights you can’t win. Getting herself or Herk killed wouldn’t help bring justice for Erica. The world was full of jerks who never got their comeuppance. Or were only exposed when they were dead.

  Not having company was normally a comfort, since she had always prized having space to herself. Now she realised she was missing Herk’s straightforward, can-do presence. Nothing seemed to faze him. She felt safe when he was around.

  The dead reporter Davey Campbell’s shorthand notebooks and clippings about Stone’s early business dealings had gone off to Russell. Matt was chasing up Stone’s Pol Pedra birth in south-western France. She made lists of leads to follow, if she decided to keep going. Automatic pilot was her way of coping. The decision dangled above her head like the sword of Damocles.

  ‘Well, made up your mind yet?’ Herk’s gruff bark behind her made her jump. She spun round in her chair, then half-turned back to switch off the raucous fanfares of Shostakovich’s ‘Fifth Symphony’. She stared at him, one hand foraging behind her on the desk for her cigarettes. Lighting up and blowing out a long stream of smoke, she contemplated the yes/no question. Go on or give up. His gaze was steady, non-committal. We actually understand each other, she thought with surprise. It was an odd feeling.

  ‘Yes and no,’ she said decisively.

  ‘Feminine logic, is that?’ He raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Nope. We go to Big Sur because it’s booked. If nothing definite comes out of that, or if it’s too big to cope with, then we cut out. Or at least I wait till the bastard’s dead before I fillet him in print.’

  ‘You need less evidence that way, then?’

  She chuckled. ‘No, just no libel risk and,’ she added, her jaw tightening, ‘less risk of us getting killed.’

  Only later, as Herk went off to shower, having had a sweaty morning acting as Speedy Charlie’s helper in a removal, did she remember about Jimmy Black in Glasgow. Her heart sank. She might have the luxury of giving up, but he was almost certainly still in danger. But at least he was away for another ten days, according to the gallery owner. Filing that one in her think-about-lat
er folder, she went off to pack for the three-day in and out trip to California.

  An empty afternoon stretched ahead. On impulse, she phoned Felicity on her personal mobile. To her surprise, she answered instantly and brightly.

  ‘You can talk?’

  ‘Oh yes, I’m at home. Mr Wrighton fired me.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘He was furious when he came back and discovered Miranda had gone off to the residential course. I said it was on a scholarship and he accused me of setting it up and betraying him. He was quite horrible to me. But I don’t care. My old job at a cancer charity has become vacant and I’m going back there.’

  ‘And Miranda?’

  ‘She’ll stay in Cornwall for three months. By then, she’ll be twenty-one and her grandmother’s trust – that’s her mother’s mother – will be hers. It isn’t a huge amount, but it means she’ll be independent. And she might even win a place in a music college in Ohio.’

  ‘Lord, that will put his nose out of joint.’

  ‘Oh, he doesn’t know all that. He thinks she’ll come home. But he seems to have business worries that are keeping him distracted, which is a blessing.’

  ‘Do you know what they are?’

  ‘Some pharmaceutical investment that a lot of people in the fathers’ organisation had put money into. I was not supposed to know about it, but I used to check his emails when he was out. He was hopeless with computers and I found his password written down one day. All the money went to an offshore account in Belize. Then it was switched to somewhere else in South America and he was most unhappy. I overheard a really angry phone conversation about it.’

  ‘Do you know who with?’

  ‘Just Harry. I never knew his surname. They used nicknames on email addresses. He came round one day and Mr Wrighton insisted I stay in my office. But I peeked through. He was very peculiar-looking.’

  ‘Short, long chin, big nose?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Felicity, I don’t suppose you kept any copies of these emails?’

  There was a long pause and a bout of nervous coughing before she whispered: ‘Yes. I put them all onto a flash drive and gave it to Miss Smythson. She was angry with me, said obtaining them was illegal and they couldn’t be used.’

  Not in court maybe, but in an exposé, for sure. Where would Erica have kept it?

  ‘Did you copy more recent ones?’

  ‘Yes, I have a memory stick here. I was going to delete it, now that Miranda’s away from him and safe.’

  ‘Don’t do that,’ Tire yelped. ‘I’ll send a courier round to pick it up. No one will know you took the emails.’

  Could Erica have wiped the original flash drive? Pure, straight-up, middle-of-the-road, stick-to-the-rules Erica, always playing the legal game according to the book? A bead of sweat trickled down Tire’s forehead as she remembered being teased about her own slippery methods of extorting the truth.

  ‘What kind of memory stick was it, Felicity?’

  ‘Oh, large. Well, you know what I mean, 64 gigabyte, since there were several years of emails and documents. It was black.’

  Erica’s jewellery box. They weren’t family photographs. She scrabbled in a dish on the desk among the paperclips for a key, unlocked the bottom drawer, opened the carved wooden box, pulled out the black flash drive and plugged it in. While her laptop found the driver, she scribbled down Felicity’s address and phoned a courier, then settled down to read. Gotcha, you bastard.

  CHAPTER 44

  The schedule was tight, arriving San Francisco early afternoon, driving down to Big Sur, dinner with Chip Nathon, next day with luck visiting the Cerigo holiday resort, attending Tom’s film party and back to San Fran to fly back the morning after.

  They both slept remarkably easily on the ten-hour flight from Heathrow, arriving just after lunch to sunny skies. After a lengthy queue at immigration, they picked up the bulky Jeep Renegade, which Herk had insisted on renting, and set off on the hundred and fifty-mile drive to Big Sur. The suburbs of San Francisco disappeared quickly as they headed for San Jose on the 101.

  ‘You gonna tell me what all that Wrighton stuff was about, then?’ Herk’s tone was even, but didn’t brook argument. She stared out at the flat countryside speeding past, trying to impose order on the blitz of emails and documents she had waded through until the early hours.

  ‘Was there anything about Erica?’

  ‘No smoking gun,’ she answered slowly. ‘Lots of hate. Some of the neanderthal friends he had confided in wanted her raped and mutilated, but no direct indication of a plot to kill her.’

  ‘Weren’t these encrypted?’ He turned off for Monterey, heading towards the coast.

  ‘Very amateur. Easy enough to access. What was more interesting were the emails from Lord Adonis, who I assume is Harman Stone. Adonis was one of Aphrodite’s lovers – the Cerigo connection.’

  He snorted.

  ‘They weren’t too detailed, but he and Wrighton were selling an energy-boosting drug, called ZZZWipeOut, mailed from Mexico and not just sent to the UK, but all over the world. Monies collected by credit card abroad, deposited in Belize. Until Adonis decided there was a risk of too much transparency in the bank there and switched the funds, several millions, to Ecuador, he said, although Wrighton clearly didn’t believe him and was livid. Especially since some of his buddies had invested heavily.’

  ‘Which tells us what, exactly?’

  She swivelled in her seat towards him and said: ‘What does wipeout suggest to you?’

  ‘Video war game, destruction.’

  ‘What about a memory cosh drug?’

  ‘S’pose,’ he said slowly.

  ‘Think about it. You’d hardly need the darknet to market a pick-me-up.’

  ‘Could be steroids.’

  ‘More likely it’s the drugs they were paying to be developed in Mexico to wipe out memory. The ones that screwed up the kids at Cerigo.’

  ‘How do we prove it?’

  ‘I got Russell to order some, sent to a PO box he’s got set up. There’s a forty-eight hour service at extra cost. Then get them analysed and we’ll see. Selling illegal drugs will put them inside for a fair stretch.’

  ‘And Erica?’

  There were times she felt like taping up his mouth. His relentless, single-minded focus was never her way of working. Keep battling through the hurricane, grabbing at whatever papers or information floated past and never give up. At the end there was usually a narrative that could be pulled together. But there again, she didn’t usually set out to prove a murder. Just to shake down the shady, with whatever weapons came to hand.

  Eventually, she said weakly: ‘We’ll catch a break if we just keep plodding on. At least we might get Greengate out of prison, if the illegal drugs were what got him stitched up.’

  The sea was dashing in foamy breakers against rocky escarpments and stony beaches, with grey architectural bridges crossing canyons along the shore-hugging Highway One, which was the only route south. She always felt at home here since it reminded her of the Scottish islands.

  ‘Is that a hawk or one of the Spanish vultures?’ Herk pointed ahead, where a large bird circled in the distance above the rising mountain.

  She fished out a small pair of binoculars, focused them and then wondered whether to answer. Finally, she said: ‘It’s maybe a turkey vulture or a condor. Can’t see at this distance. The flight path is wobbly, so probably a vulture.’

  ‘Hallelujah,’ he said gloomily. ‘I just don’t fancy a rerun of the last time.’

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake. People live under them fifty-two weeks a year and manage to stay upright.’

  A slow-moving Winnebago in front with a ‘God Bless America’ sticker in the rear window held his attention for several minutes as he willed it to move into a lay-by to allow them to pass.

  ‘You haven’t mentioned our stars for a day or so. According to the news, Diegolu is still in a coma and there was a bus crash in a Swiss tu
nnel that killed thirty-five. It’s all piling up, as you said.’

  ‘Same as, same as. It’s got a few more days to run. High stress, irritable, blocked.’

  ‘You mean risky and trapped?’ he said, giving her a sideways glance.

  ‘For some, not necessarily us. Don’t worry, the world isn’t going to implode. It’ll pass. Look.’ She diverted his attention out to sea where a flock of large brown birds with extended beaks were massing just above the waves, some plummeting straight down into the water and rising up with their pouches sagging under the weight of fish. ‘Pelicans. They’re cute.’

  ‘What do they mean?’

  She twisted in her seat to see if he was joking or serious and couldn’t decide, until she noticed his lips twitching.

  ‘They bring their young back from the dead, feed them on their own blood.’

  There was a silence and then they both laughed out loud. Shit. She’d forgotten. Rummaging in her briefcase she found the full astrology chart of Paul Stone, aka Pol Pedra, which she had printed out before she left but had not had time to absorb.

  ‘Matt found Stone’s original birth certificate and it has his time of birth.’

  ‘Huh. Makes a difference?’

  ‘Yeah. It gives you more information. Too complicated to explain why. But what it headlines is he’s running into a brick wall about now – loss of reputation, trapped, enraged. Complete devastation, major confusion.’

  ‘Like a cornered tiger, you mean? Not sure that sounds so great. Desperate men can do very stupid things,’ he answered.

  ‘No, you miss the point. If he melts down, and it may be nothing we’re doing that causes it, then he’s no longer in a position to protect Harman.’

  She punched his arm with a grin and settled back in her seat with a relieved smile on her face, her motivation and morale restored.