Carnal Acts

by Sam Alexander

  The ACC called Heck Rutherford. She was concerned he would be having a reaction to what he’d been through – she had seen something approaching fear in his eyes in the weeks since he came back to work. When she told him of her concern, he said he would set off immediately for Favon Hall with Pancake Rokeby.

  Ruth Dickie hadn’t known the DS’s nickname. Maybe a girlfriend had given it to him.

  147

  There was no one in the estate’s outer fields as it was Sunday. It took Joni seven minutes to reach the ornamental gate to Favon Hall, having forced two cars into the ditches that lined the narrow road. There was a pair of cones across the entrance, but she ran the Land Rover over them without braking. The long driveway meandered between lines of copper and silver beeches so thick that the light was almost shut out. Then she came into the open to the left of the Hall. There was no sign of any other cars. The medieval tower was to the rear on her right, the red Hilux parked outside the building’s open door. Joni considered going there, but decided against it. The tower looked like it was ready to collapse. She saw vehicles at the front of the Hall – Lady Favon’s sports car and her husband’s red Land Cruiser. There was no sign of the black 4×4. As she got nearer, she realised that the wheels on the nearside of both vehicles had burst. When she got out of the Land Rover, she saw the spatter of shotgun pellets. Her heart began to beat more quickly.

  The main door was open. Joni went up the steps and into the entrance hall. Standing still, she listened but there was no sound of people. Joni could see the sitting room where she, Heck and Pete Rokeby had interviewed the aristocrats, but there was no one in there. She checked the other rooms on the ground floor – dining room, kitchen, study, breakfast room, TV room, unimpressive picture gallery, and the magnificent old library – but there was no sign of anyone. She went down the stairs behind a green baize-covered door and past a laundry room. Beyond it most of the rooms were filled with dusty old furniture and junk. Then she came to a door that led outside. It was half open. She looked down and noticed drops of blood on the step outside. Turning round, she saw more on the passage she had walked along.

  ‘Shit,’ she said. She’d potentially contaminated a crime scene. She went back the way she’d come, keeping close to the wall. The drops grew less frequent, as if a bandage or the like had been applied.

  Back on the ground floor, Joni ran up the wide staircase. She took in the large portraits on the walls showing heavy, self-satisfied men in the clothes of days gone by, medals and other decorations on their frock coats and swords at their belts. In the background of each painting were fields and plantations. Looking closer, she saw the bent bodies of black men and women, the former wearing nothing but loincloths and the latter in white dresses and headbands. Each portrait’s subject had a table in front of him, bearing a tea service with an especially large sugar bowl heaped high with white grains. Sugar – the gold of the Caribbean and source of Britain’s empire. Joni knew enough about history to make that connection. She took in the haughty faces again – slave traders, exploiters, thieves. The Hall had an unhealthy air and she felt her lungs constrict.

  She stopped on the landing and listened. She could hear voices coming down a corridor. The walls were pale pink, with elaborately carved doors and frames on either side. As she approached the open door at the end, there came a scream that turned into heart-rending sobs. Joni remembered the screwdriver in her pocket and grabbed it.

  ‘No!’ came a woman’s voice. ‘For God’s sake, no!’

  Joni entered the room and took in the scene. There were five people in the sitting area by the high window looking over the garden to the edge of the moor. To the right was a large bed. Andrew Favon had a towel over his head, and another round his neck. The skin on his face and forehead was torn and there was a lot of blood. He was breathing heavily.

  ‘DI Pax,’ said Michael Etherington. ‘Just the person.’ The muzzle of his hunting rifle was against the side of Victoria Favon’s head. She looked terrified, but her expression quickly changed.

  ‘Put down the weapon, sir,’ Joni said, aware that the screwdriver made her look ridiculous. ‘You do the same with the shotgun, Ms Favon, please.’

  Neither complied. She examined the thin figure in outsize clothes crouching beside an armchair.

  ‘Suzana?’ she said. ‘Suzana Noli?’

  The young woman looked at her blankly and then gave her a weak smile. ‘Pax? Jo-ni Pax?’

  ‘Are you all right?’ Joni asked, in Italian. ‘We’ve been looking for you everywhere.’

  Suzana replied in ungrammatical Italian, speaking quickly. Joni glanced at the others. The general was still aiming the rifle at Lady Favon, while her daughter had gone to Lord Favon. At first Joni thought she was going to comfort him. Instead, Evie put a hand in his jacket pocket and took out several orange cartridges. She slipped two of them into the shotgun she had broken, then snapped it shut and pointed it at her mother. Eventually Suzana stopped talking and ran the back of a hand over her lips.

  ‘What did she say?’ Evie asked.

  Joni shook her head. ‘That she was attacked by a man on the moor, who is locked in a room in the tower, as she was. There’s also a middle-aged and, in her words, “ugly and fat” woman in the bathroom.’

  ‘Cheryl,’ Evie said. ‘I saw her go in, but I thought it was Dan. She was wearing a balaclava.’

  Joni nodded. ‘Suzana was brought to the tower by a heavy-shouldered man with a moustache. He had two large and vicious dogs.’ She looked at Lord Favon. ‘That would have been Dan Reston. You didn’t take him to Newcastle train station, did you?’

  Favon mumbled something incomprehensible.

  ‘Who’s the man in the tower?’ Joni asked.

  Lady Favon had recovered her poise. ‘Oliver Forrest. My husband’s been at loggerheads with him for years. He finally lost his cool.’

  ‘Vick!’ Andrew gasped. ‘What … what are you saying?’

  ‘He had that Albanian tart under lock and key too.’ Lady Favon laughed harshly. ‘Pampering her so he could do the things to her that I stopped letting him do to me years ago.’ She moved her head against the rifle muzzle. ‘Michael, now there’s a police officer here, perhaps you would consider removing the weapon?’

  General Etherington gave that some thought and said, ‘No. Not until you’ve answered my questions.’

  ‘And mine,’ Evie said, limping forward.

  Joni had gone to Suzana and helped her to an armchair. She saw a carafe of water on an antique table and filled a glass for the young woman. She smiled at her and then turned to the others.

  ‘The weapons,’ she said. ‘Please lower them.’

  The general looked at her and nodded. He put the rifle on the floor behind him. Evie did the same with the shotgun and went to sit on the window seat.

  ‘Thank you,’ Joni said. ‘Lord Favon, are you badly injured?’

  ‘Only flesh wounds,’ he said, with more spirit than she’d have expected.

  Joni looked around the well-appointed room. ‘Why are you here rather than downstairs?’

  ‘My daughter’s idea,’ Victoria said suavely. ‘She thinks there are hidden secrets in my room.’

  ‘Well, aren’t there?’ Evie shouted. She turned to Joni. ‘I heard them lie to you about the Restons.’ She let out a sob. ‘And I heard her say she had sex with Nick.’

  ‘Before you were with him, darling.’

  ‘Let’s talk about Nick,’ Michael Etherington said. ‘He’s why I’m here. I knew you had an affair with him, Victoria. He told me. Fortunately he soon got over it.’

  Lady Favon’s carefully made-up face clenched.

  ‘But you wanted him again when he started visiting Evie, didn’t you?’ The general stepped closer. ‘Didn’t you?’

  ‘Calm down, Michael. And what if I did?’

  ‘You wanted to take him from me,’ Evie said, her voice breaking. ‘You … you couldn’t stand … to see me happy.’

  ‘You were in th
e Suzuki that drove Nick off the road, weren’t you, Victoria?’ the general said.

  Lady Favon looked at Joni. ‘Shouldn’t you be asking the questions, Detective Inspector?’

  ‘I think he’s doing an excellent job,’ Joni said, wondering how Michael Etherington had found out who was in the 4×4.

  ‘Who killed him?’ the general yelled. ‘You weren’t driving. Was that bastard Reston at the wheel?’

  Victoria Favon looked down. ‘Yes, he was. I just wanted to teach Nick a lesson. I stopped him after he left Evie that night and told him how much I wanted him. The impudent boy told me that he loved Evie and, besides, I was too old for him.’

  ‘Teach Nick a lesson?’ Michael repeated. ‘By running him off the road? You could have killed him straight off.’

  ‘Dan said it was soft ground there.’

  The general’s face was red. ‘So who took the rock and smashed the life out of him?’

  ‘Certainly not me.’

  ‘There were prints from size ten Adipower baseball boots,’ Joni said. ‘I’d say Reston was wearing them.’

  ‘Thank you, DI Pax,’ Victoria Favon said.

  ‘But you didn’t stop him,’ Etherington said, his spittle flecking her face. ‘Perhaps you even incited him.’

  ‘I didn’t have to, Michael. Dan Reston’s been jealous of the men I’ve been involved with for years – ever since I stopped seeing him.’

  Lord Favon’s head dropped, while Evie gasped in disgust.

  ‘He’s impotent after his prostate operation,’ Joni said. ‘Did that make him even angrier?’

  ‘Indeed it did.’ Lady Favon smiled gratefully.

  Joni caught her gaze. ‘At the very least you’re guilty of aiding and abetting a murderer,’ she said.

  ‘In that case, so is my husband. He was very keen that something happen to Nick. The boy recognised him at the brothel in Corham on Sunday night, despite the ghastly wig he was wearing.’

  Joni nodded; it was as she had suspected. ‘How do you know all this?’ she asked the general.

  ‘I have a reliable source.’

  ‘The bugger who’s been blackmailing me?’ Andrew Favon asked, raising his head.

  ‘Correct,’ Michael said. ‘You’re both in well over your heads and you’re going to pay for it.’

  Joni had a good idea who the blackmailer was. She looked at Lady Favon, remembering the research she’d done. ‘You knew soon after you were married that Lord Favon was infertile.’

  ‘Before, as a matter of fact. I didn’t care. The deal was that I produce an heir to the title – it didn’t matter who the sperm donor was.’ Victoria Favon smiled sadly. ‘Evie’s father was a pleasant if dim electrician but after that nothing stuck, so to speak. It wasn’t for lack of trying, I can assure you.’

  ‘You wanted a male heir,’ Joni said.

  ‘Needed one, more like,’ Victoria said, glancing at her daughter. ‘I’m sorry, darling, but you won’t inherit. Some lumberjack in Ontario will be the next Lord Favon unless I can get pregnant.’

  ‘You won’t have much chance of that in prison,’ Evie said, surprisingly calm.

  ‘Anything’s possible if you know the right people.’

  ‘And if you have the money,’ Joni said. ‘But you’re in trouble financially, aren’t you?’ She looked at Andrew Favon.

  ‘Don’t ask me,’ he said, head down again. ‘I only sign the cheques.’

  Michael Etherington was staring at Lady Favon. ‘It was you, wasn’t it? You were the one who got in with the Albanians.’

  She shrugged. ‘Something had to be done. The estate’s been haemorrhaging money for years. The financial crash was a disaster for us. The Albanians…’

  The stutter of machine-pistol fire made Joni dive to the side. Suzana and Evie also hit the carpet, but Victoria sat perfectly still. Plaster fell from the ceiling in snow-like flakes.

  ‘There you are,’ the lady of the house said. ‘Couldn’t you have made an appearance earlier?’

  The man in the black leather jacket and cap smiled. There was a bandage round his upper left arm. Joni realised he was the one whose shots had hit her mother and Morrie Simmons.

  Lady Favon twitched her lips. ‘What are you going to do with these miserable creatures?’

  ‘Kill them, of course.’ The gunman’s English was precise, the accent neutral and almost robotic. ‘The police officer Pax has already escaped death twice today. The whore Suzana Noli should be fucked to death, but there isn’t time for that. No doubt more police are on the way. I presume you want me to kill your man.’ He glanced at Lord Favon, who was staring at him, mouth agape.

  Victoria Favon’s brow furrowed. ‘Do you have a better idea?’

  ‘In normal circumstances, he would be a useful hostage – to make sure you deliver the profits on our investment as you promised. But this is an exceptional situation and…’ The Albanian broke off and gave the viscountess a slack smile. ‘And you are not a normal mother.’

  Something in the tone of his voice alerted both Joni and Lady Favon. The latter stood up and moved towards him.

  ‘Stop,’ he said, pointing the gun at her. ‘You are not at all a normal person. You are unreliable and you know too much.’

  Victoria screamed but, before her killer could pull the trigger, there was a single, loud shot. As the Albanian fell back, a gaping wound in his chest, the machine pistol moved to his right. An oblique line of wounds ran from Michael Etherington’s right shoulder to the left of his groin. He crashed to the floor and didn’t move again.

  Evie and her mother shrieked, while Lord Favon sat motionless. But Suzana was smiling as she got to her feet.

  ‘He was a Popi,’ she said, in Italian. ‘They all deserve death.’

  The distant sound of a siren cut through the ringing in Joni’s ears. Backup had arrived and it was too late. Or was it?

  148

  The Armed Response Unit had been delayed behind a car that had swerved off the narrow road and blocked it. Heck and Pancake arrived as they finished pushing it into the ditch, the driver waving his arms like he was sending an irate message in semaphore.

  ‘Where’s that fucking helicopter?’ Heck said, as he drove past the ARU van, holding up his warrant card.

  ‘On its way from Sunderland. Boy racers in a stolen Merc.’

  ‘Brilliant.’ He drove over a couple of crushed bollards into the Favon estate and slammed the accelerator to the floor.

  ‘Sir!’ Rokeby yelled. ‘Let’s get there in one piece.’

  ‘Shut up, Pancake. Joni’s up there with a houseful of maniacs.’

  ‘Ah, my shoulder!’

  ‘Take it like a man. Nearly there.’

  Heck swung across the drive, gravel spraying all over the place. ‘Come on!’

  They ran towards the main entrance of the Hall. As they got to the top of the steps, Evie Favon appeared, her face pale and her limp more pronounced.

  ‘Where’s Joni?’ Heck yelled. ‘DI Pax?’

  Evie shrugged listlessly.

  ‘She’s with that Albanian whore,’ Lady Favon said, putting on a leather coat.

  ‘Pancake, look after the ladies. Make sure they stay here.’

  Victoria Favon sighed and Evie laughed bitterly.

  ‘How do, my lord?’ Heck said, as he ran into the drawing room. ‘Jesus, what happened to you?’

  ‘Eh? Whisky and soda?’

  ‘Where are they?’ Heck yelled.

  ‘What? Oh, upstairs, last room on the right.’

  Heck took two steps at a time, feeling fitter than he had since his operation. This was about Joni. She was what mattered. He pounded down the pink walled hallway, realising as he got closer to the open door that there was a strong smell of gunsmoke.

  ‘Fuck!’ he said, slowing to turn into the room.

  The bodies were sprawled in a welter of blood.

  ‘No!’ he screamed. ‘Joni? No!’

  149

  ‘This way,’ Joni said, leading Suz
ana along the passage to the basement stairs. She opened the door. A dark blue BMW was parked near the house, presumably the assassin’s. About two hundred yards beyond, there was a thick line of trees.

  ‘You go first,’ Joni said, in Italian. She felt for the Albanian girl, but she didn’t want to sacrifice her career. ‘I’ll pretend I’m chasing you in case anyone sees us.’

  Suzana nodded and hared away. Joni gave her ten seconds and followed, not running as fast as she could, but making it look as if she was. Once she reached the trees, she saw Suzana waiting.

  ‘We don’t have much time,’ Joni said. ‘Listen to me. I know how dangerous it would be for you in prison and I think you were right to do what you did to those bastards in the brothel.’

  ‘Slave house,’ said Suzana.

  Joni looked into her grey eyes, bottomless pools of pain. ‘You were right to defend yourselves against the fools in the park, too. And against the piece of shit with the motorbike. I’m so sorry for everything that’s happened to you.’ She glanced back towards the house. There was no one in the vicinity.

  ‘I see your photo in newspaper,’ Suzana said, smiling shyly. ‘You are more beautiful in real.’

  Joni’s heart broke, but she concealed it. If Suzana was to get away and survive, the girl – because that was what she was – had to stay tough. She took out her wallet and handed over all the cash. ‘Stay away from big cities. Use the public libraries to learn English.’ She let out a sob. ‘Oh, Suzana, I wish I could help you more.’

  ‘Is all right,’ the Albanian said. ‘I can look after me.’ She smiled again. ‘I will become great businesswoman, you will see. Not any more slave.’

  Joni nodded, her eyes damp, and leaned forward to embrace Suzana. Then she watched the slim form move through the trees until she disappeared in the gloom. Did Suzana have a chance of staying below her countrymen’s radar? If so, it wouldn’t be much of one.