Paying the Ferryman

by Jane A. Adams

  ‘And you figure Gregory is the symbol of all that is opposite to them?’

  ‘Yes! Well, no. I don’t know, maybe.’

  Alec squeezed her hands and then let go, instead slipped an arm around her shoulders. ‘We’re not that side of the line any more, love. You and me, we crossed over that line a very long time ago, scuffed it out and made a run for it. And that has nothing to do with Gregory.’

  ‘Doesn’t it?’

  ‘No. He just … I don’t know … made it easier to forget what we’d left behind. But Naomi, love, I’ve given this a lot of thought. For a while I felt utterly devastated by it, by having to recognize that there were no real right and wrong answers. I got very depressed and very miserable for a while. You know I did. Gregory saved lives. Gregory saved people we love. You and I, we protected him and Nathan. We made a decision and we now have to live with that. We stopped making simple moral judgements – and don’t ask me when because I’m not sure now. Even that seems blurred around the edges.’

  ‘You’re telling me we’re the same as him?’

  ‘I’m saying that on some level we probably always were. If we hadn’t been we’d have done everything we could to get him and Nathan locked up. But we didn’t. We became complicit. No one forced us, not even circumstance. We made decisions and we took steps and, to put it crudely, love, we became the people we used to hunt.’

  ‘God, that’s depressing.’

  ‘Is it? I’m not so sure.’

  ‘Nothing is ever simple, is it?’

  ‘Nothing ever was.’ He kissed her hair and then her face. ‘We just managed to fool ourselves that it might be.’

  FORTY-NINE

  Madeleine Jeffries was in her bedroom, packing. Her husband let them in. He looked worried and tired, Steel thought. Madeleine, on the other hand, was just furious.

  ‘Going somewhere?’

  ‘Away. None of your damned business.’

  ‘You don’t have a funeral to arrange, or anything?’

  ‘They can chuck his remains to the dogs, for all I care.’

  ‘Madeleine, did you really never look at the letter Thea sent you?’

  ‘Why should I have done?’

  ‘You kept it. You must have cared about her on some level.’

  ‘I thought she had a raw deal. I thought—’

  She sat down suddenly on the edge of the bed, the fight suddenly dissipating. ‘That first year, after she left, I kept expecting a phone call, a letter, something to say that she’d be arriving to see me, or arranging to meet up. Then I started to think that maybe Terry had found her. That she and Sarah were dead already. Then I started to wonder if I should open the letter or take it to the police or something. After a while I just … well, not forgot about it, but I stopped thinking about it. Stopped thinking about them. Most of the time.’

  ‘You were close to Thea?’

  ‘I tried to be. I knew what Terry was. I knew her before Terry, you see.’

  ‘You were friends before?’

  ‘Oh, God. Yes.’

  Her husband stood in the bedroom door. He came and sat down on the bed beside her. ‘Maddie, love. You can’t go on like this. You’ve got to talk.’

  ‘There isn’t much to tell. Maybe that’s the trouble. There is so little to tell.’

  They went downstairs, convened in the large kitchen, sitting around the table while Madeleine’s husband made tea and offered biscuits.

  ‘When did you meet?’

  ‘Years ago. It was summer. I was twenty-three, same age as Terry. That was the mad thing about our family. All these kids knocking about. Maybe they were cousins, maybe they were half siblings. Half the time I don’t think even our dad knew.’

  ‘But you got on well?’

  ‘Mostly, yes. The usual sibling rivalry, but nothing abnormal, especially considering how strange the set up was. Anyway, I’d just bought a car. It wasn’t much and Dad would have paid for whatever I wanted, but even then I’d begun to pull away. I’d got a job, I’d saved and I’d done it myself.’

  ‘How did he feel about that? Your father?’

  Madeleine smiled, her eyes softening for a moment. ‘Oh, I think he was proud. He encouraged us all to think. If we wanted to study, go to university, go abroad, he helped us do it. That was the daft thing about him. The crazy thing. Hard as nails so far as the rest of the world was concerned. You crossed him, you were dead. And his women, they were never more than flings. If they produced a kid, he didn’t mind. The kids were his, sort of proved his manhood, I suppose. He’d use the mothers just as badly as he’d use anyone else. He never cared if they left him, just as long as they left the kid behind.’

  ‘That sounds cruel,’ Sophie commented.

  Madeleine nodded. ‘He was cruel. He was vicious. He was vindictive. But not with us and not with his wife.’

  ‘Your mother.’

  Madeleine nodded. ‘She ruled the roost at home. There were five of us – the legitimate ones, I suppose you’d say. I was the only girl and so I was his princess.’

  ‘And when you left?’

  ‘He wished me well and told me not to come back. I’d chosen my path, he said, and I was welcome to do that. But once I’d chosen, I couldn’t change my mind. He hated ditherers.’ She laughed, harshly. ‘Decisiveness, that was what he valued. Trouble was, Terry thought he was being decisive when all he was doing was being a prat.’

  ‘And you were all together. When?’

  ‘Me, Terry, Roddy and Marcus, we all drove down to Somerset.’

  ‘Marcus? He went with you?’

  She nodded. ‘We’d known one another for ever. Literally all our lives. Roddy and Marcus were about the same age; they were supposed to be keeping an eye on us. We dropped Roddy off somewhere on the way. I forget exactly where. He was like our dad, a girl in every town. The rest of us carried on to the festival.’

  ‘And you met Thea.’

  ‘Yes. She was nineteen, very pretty, down with a group of friends, but by the time the weekend was over, they went home and she stayed on. I’d got a couple of weeks’ holiday booked from work and she came with us. We wandered round Somerset, went down into Cornwall. It was a lovely couple of weeks. Then I had to get back to work and Thea, Terry and Marcus stayed on.’

  ‘How long for?’ Steel asked.

  ‘I don’t know. A couple more weeks, I think. Then Terry came back.’

  ‘Without Thea.’

  ‘That time. Yes. He said she’d hooked up with Marcus and he was staying on for a while. That she’d found a job in a hotel … I think. It was summer, there would have been a fair amount of casual work around, I suppose.’

  A hotel, Steel thought. Weren’t Marcus’s wider family, the Vitellis, in the hotel business? Was there a link there too?

  ‘And then?’

  ‘And then I don’t know.’

  ‘She met me,’ Madeleine’s husband said.

  ‘I’d got a new job in a school reception. Brian worked there and it all happened a bit quickly after that. By Christmas we’d moved in together, but I’d moved away from London anyway after the summer. Taken this new job, found a bedsit.’

  ‘So you’d not seen Terry or Marcus?’

  ‘Terry a couple of times. Marcus, no. I didn’t go back until the following summer when I went to a family wedding and I told our father that I was leaving for good. Terry wasn’t pleased. No one else was bothered but Terry had this sort of proprietorial air, you know. Even within the family.’

  ‘And you heard from Thea?’

  ‘Not for a while. I got postcards for a bit, the odd phone call. She sounded happy. I saw Marcus at the wedding and he told me it hadn’t worked out. He had to come back to London and she’d stayed in Somerset. They’d kept seeing one another for a while, but … long-distance romances are hard.’

  Steel nodded, considering his next question. Sophie got there first.

  ‘So Thea was nineteen when you all met. It was a couple of years after that when she hook
ed up with Terry.’

  ‘He brought her back to London the summer after the family wedding. The summer after I left, yes. She was pregnant.’

  ‘Did you renew your contact with her?’

  Madeleine glanced away. ‘We’d sort of kept in touch,’ she said. ‘Terry didn’t like it, but at first Thea didn’t care. It was only after Sarah was born that he really started to wear her down. Even so, she stuck it for another seven years, didn’t she, stupid little—’

  ‘And in the meantime, your father died and you got on with your life.’

  She nodded.

  ‘And Marcus?’

  ‘I had Christmas and birthday cards. Nothing more. I left, they cut me off. Same difference.’

  ‘But you kept in touch with Trinny?’ Sophie reminded her.

  For the first time, Madeleine smiled properly. ‘Aunt Trinny,’ she said. ‘We lived in the big house at the end of the road and she was in the middle of the terrace. Terry moved Thea in three doors down.’

  ‘And do you remember someone called Josette Harris?’

  Madeleine laughed harshly. ‘That bitch. I remember her. Why?’

  ‘Because she called the incident room asking about Sarah, said she was a friend.’

  ‘A friend? You have to be kidding me. She was Roddy’s bit on the side. Rumour was Terry wasn’t above … anyway, she was no friend. Thea hated her guts.’

  So maybe she was fishing on behalf of someone else, Steel thought. ‘You were telling us about Trinny.’

  ‘She and Mum were friends. Dad tried it on with her but she wasn’t having anything to do with it. I think he respected her in an odd kind of way. When Mum was dying she was in and out of our house like family. Sat with her for hours. Mum was terrified of going into hospital, dying away from her family, and Dad said that he would never let that happen. And he never did. He paid for nurses, but Mum liked to have Trinny there. So, I kept in touch and she tried to keep an eye on Thea because I asked her to.’

  Steel nodded. He doubted Madeleine could tell him much more. ‘You were packing,’ he said.

  ‘Yes. We’re going away for a while. Brian’s school think it’s a family bereavement.’

  ‘Well, I suppose it is. In a way,’ Steel said. ‘Madeleine, I’d like a phone number, just in case I need to contact you again.’

  ‘Why would you? I’ve told you all I know.’ But she gave him one anyway and he entered it into his phone.

  ‘Just one more thing,’ Willis said as they were about to leave. ‘Did Marcus ever use an alias?’

  ‘What, a false name? Oh, all the time. It was a game to him. He’d got false ID in all sorts of names. Mostly, I think, just because it amused him. Just because he could.’

  ‘And did one of them happen to be Anthony Bertram?’

  She shrugged. ‘Might have been. He had a thing about the name Tony for a while. He hated the name Marcus.’

  ‘And what about these?’ Steel spread the copies of the A4 sheet, with the taped key and the business cards, out on the table.

  ‘Looks like a locker key,’ Brian said.

  ‘That’s pretty much what we thought. Do the names or numbers mean anything to you? Roddy Bishop and Karla Brunel? Did Roddy ever use a different name?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Not that I remember.’ Madeleine shook her head. ‘The business card. Maxwell and the rest. I think they were the solicitors our dad used, but I don’t really remember.’

  Steel nodded. ‘Call me if you think of anything,’ he said.

  As they drove away Sophie asked him, ‘How much of that do you think was true?’

  ‘In broad terms, I think most of it. I also think she was more fond of Marcus, aka Victor Griffin, than she’d like her husband to think. And I suspect she had an inkling of what the names and numbers might be, but she’s so busy denying her past that she won’t let herself think about it.’

  ‘Sounds convoluted.’

  ‘Probably is.’ Steel conceded. ‘But it makes a few connections clearer at any rate and it raises the question again: did Marcus and Thea keep in touch all that time?’

  ‘I’d bet on it,’ Sophie said.

  FIFTY

  Steel and Sophie checked in at the hospital. There’d been a press conference at noon – which Steel was relieved not to have handled, though he did feature as the subject of questions. Links were being made to Roddy Baldwin and the two deaths in Ferrymouth and Steel was curious as to how that had come about. The Griffins might have been a mystery, but no one had suggested that the name Baldwin was relevant.

  Questions had been asked too about Joey Hughes and his mother. Absence of anything useful or new to report had led to some odd little stories about the growth of rural crime.

  Steel shook his head as he listened to the radio.

  ‘Don’t fret, boss. They’ll get bored soon enough and bugger off home. I imagine they’re jockeying for position down in London right now. Roddy Baldwin is bigger news.’

  ‘And once the link is fully established? That Lisanne Griffin was his one time sister-in-law? That Ricky Lang was a half brother? I’m surprised no one’s come up with that one yet.’

  ‘Oh, there’s time,’ Sophie said cheerfully. ‘I reckon that’ll be on the six o’clock.’

  Sarah was in poor spirits. Stacy was back. Maggie had gone into work for a few hours and taken Tel with her so they could get something to eat and a change of clothes.

  There was no encouraging news about Joey. Steel stood in the reception of the high dependency unit and looked through the glass. The doctor he had been waiting for came and stood beside him. ‘Any change?’

  ‘None, I’m afraid.’

  ‘His chances?’

  The doctor hesitated. ‘Poor, at best,’ he said. ‘But every hour is a bonus. Every day an even bigger one.’

  ‘Will there be brain damage?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that, not yet.’

  Steel left, depressed and frustrated. Sophie was waiting for him beside the car. ‘No news on Hughes,’ she said. ‘A few possible sightings, but nothing conclusive. The neighbour who recognized Ricky Lang as one of the men that called on the Griffins has tried to write a list of days and times she spotted them, but—’

  Steel nodded. ‘Everyone wants to be useful,’ he said. ‘But the truth is, it’s all ground to a shuddering halt, hasn’t it?’

  ‘We could pay another visit to Terry Baldwin.’

  ‘We could. Our colleagues at the Met would really love that. If nothing useful has broken in the meantime I’ll call the prison, see what we can arrange. But not today. I think you’ve done enough driving and I’ve had enough of being driven. I want to talk to Naomi and Alec and then see what we can do with that list of names and numbers.’

  Sophie smiled. ‘You do know a dozen people are working that angle already, don’t you?’

  ‘And what else am I going to do? Sit about and twiddle my thumbs?’ He thumped down into the passenger seat and closed his eyes. ‘I feel like someone’s slamming doors in my face,’ he said. ‘I’ve got three shot dead and one battered to death and one who probably won’t survive the next few hours, and I’m getting absolutely nowhere. And the bastards putting the biggest block on me are those supposed to be on the same side.’

  ‘They’re scared of a turf war. Who wouldn’t be? Someone has to replace Roddy Baldwin, and while the Vitellis and the Baldwins are busy accusing one another of murder it’ll be like a powder keg.’

  ‘Drive me to the Dog,’ he said. ‘Then you go and check in with the incident room. I’ll join you as soon as I’ve had a word with the Friedmans.’

  Sarah had drifted off to sleep. She’d had so little the night before and exhaustion finally overcame anxiety. Stacy watched her for a while and then decided she needed to stretch her legs for a bit. She wandered out into the corridor and looked through the window down into the car park below. The overnight rain had cleared and given way to a clear and blustery day. She leaned her head against the glass, thinking
about her family and her kid sister, not much older than Sarah. About Joey and the probability that he wouldn’t survive. She closed her eyes.

  ‘Stacy?’ Sarah came out into the hall. ‘I wondered where you were.’

  ‘Sorry, Sarah. I thought you were asleep.’

  ‘Can we walk down to the coffee machine?’

  ‘I don’t see why not.’ Steel had left her more change. ‘You want a hot chocolate?’

  ‘I think so, yeah.’

  ‘Did something wake you up?’

  Sarah nodded. ‘I had this weird dream,’ she said. ‘It was kind of like I was remembering too. You ever have dreams like that?’

  ‘Sometimes. Are your feet cold? Where are the slipper socks Maggie brought for you?’

  ‘I’m OK. I’ll put them on in a minute. I wish I could go and live with Maggie. What do you think will happen when … when I get out of here?’

  ‘I don’t know, love. I really don’t. But wherever you end up staying you know that Maggie and Tel will keep in touch. They love you, you know that?’

  ‘And Joey,’ Sarah said softly. ‘Him too.’

  Oh Christ, Stacy thought. ‘Him too,’ she said. ‘And me if you want me to.’

  ‘Thanks. I’d like that.’ She wiped her eyes, tears never very far away. Stacy put an arm round her shoulders and hugged her. ‘So, what was your dream about, then?’

  They walked slowly towards the vending machine. I’ve practically worn a furrow in this corridor, Stacy thought.

  ‘I was dreaming that I was just a little kid again, before we ran away from my dad. He was in the other room, downstairs. He’d told me to go away, so I had. He was always telling me to get out of his way. Sometimes he’d just turf me out of the house. Mum wasn’t home, but I don’t know where she was. I’d gone into the kitchen to get a drink when I heard him come downstairs and let someone in.’

  ‘You remember who?’

  ‘Not really, no. The voice sounded kind of familiar, like family, but it … I don’t know. Dreams are like that though, aren’t they?’

  ‘They are. Yes. You said this was more like a memory?’