by Jo Allen
‘It was Ryan Goodman, that man who had upset George. I knew about it through the local chat. I’d never met him. He had a gun but I moved very quickly. You don’t know what you can do until you’re scared for your life, do you?’
She lifted her coffee cup, but it never touched her lips and she set it down again. ‘I lunged at him and the gun went off. I swear I felt the bullet go past, but it didn’t hit me. I grabbed the chair and I must have got a lucky hit. He fell over. He must have hit his head on the table or something, because he didn’t get up.’
‘And then? What did you do?’
‘I should have called 999.’ Miranda inspected her fingernails. ‘I don’t know why I didn’t. But then he came round and—’
‘And?’
‘I helped him up. He didn’t know what had happened. He didn’t know where he was, or who he was. I spoke to him and called him by his name and he just looked back at me. So I told him I’d take him back to the house and help him, and I took him along to the church. I hit him with the stone at the gate and then I buried him in poor George’s grave.’ At last she began to weep, silent tears that rolled down her cheek and dropped into the plate among the crumbs.
Ashleigh got up and fetched her a second piece of kitchen paper.
‘I had no choice,’ Miranda said to her, accepting it. ‘At any moment he might have killed me.’
But she was lying. If Ryan had come to his senses he could still have carried out her execution and every moment she’d spent with him was a risk. She must have had help. Jude saw Ashleigh about to say something, probably the same thing, and shook his head at her. It would wait. ‘Okay, Mrs Neilson. In the light of this confession, I’m going to take you back with me and ask you to repeat your statement in an interview room and in the presence of a lawyer. You’re under arrest for the murder of Karl Faulkner, also known as Ryan Goodman. Further charges relating to the death of Summer Raine may follow. You aren’t obliged to say anything further, and anything you do say will be taken down and may be used against you in court.’
Miranda dipped her head. They stood up and she piled the coffee cups and plates in the sink. ‘I’d better tell Robert,’ she said, as they went into the hall.
‘Tell Robert what?’ The man himself erupted from the distance. ‘Miranda?’ His face was concerned.
‘I’ve told the police about Ryan.’ She faced him. ‘I told them I killed him. I told them how I took him to the churchyard. That I buried him.’
As clear as day, she was warning him. The game might be up but Miranda, it was clear, was still prepared to lie to protect those she cared for. Jude met Ashleigh’s eye, and nodded. Best to leave Robert for someone else to pick up. There was nowhere he could run to.
‘I’m calling my solicitor.’ He dived back towards his office. ‘I’ll follow you up. Don’t worry, Miranda. I’m in control of this situation. Do as they tell you just now. It’ll all be sorted out.’
They headed out of the house, Aida hovering behind them. ‘Mrs Neilson. If there’s anything you need…’
‘It’s all right thank you, Aida. Everything will be fine. And at least I’ll be safe.’
At Ashleigh’s side, she moved towards the Mercedes while Jude, on the driver’s side, called Doddsy. ‘Get a couple of cars down to the Neilsons’, would you? We’re bringing in Miranda. She’s got a confession for us. I want you to bring in Robert on suspicion of aiding and abetting, if not for murder itself.’ It wouldn’t take long to get the truth of what happened in the churchyard, even if Miranda thought her easy confession had worked. He closed down the call. ‘Okay, Mrs Neilson. Let’s go.’
Miranda went willingly. ‘If I’m honest,’ she said as Jude went round to the driver’s seat of the Mercedes, ‘it’s a relief. In prison I’ll be safe.’
Jude looked back at the house, directly at Robert who was standing on the gravel with Aida a few yards behind him. Something about Robert’s uncertainty held his attention and then he saw the financier reach into his pocket, saw the slight fumble that suggested he didn’t quite know what to do, saw the flash of sunlight on the barrel of a compact hand gun.
Christ.
‘Drop that!’ he shouted, too late to stop Robert’s finger on the trigger or the bullet that hissed along an impossibly fortunate line between Ashleigh, Miranda and himself and starred the two front windows of the Mercedes.
As Miranda screamed, Jude moved. Too late, too far away.
‘Stop right there!’ said Robert, his voice shaking. ‘Everyone stay still.’
Jude stopped. Miranda had taken shelter behind Ashleigh, crouched against her body with her fingers digging into Ashleigh’s arms, restraining her protector from taking on her attacker. The second bullet, which would surely have found Miranda’s heart or her head, remained in the gun.
That shake of the hand. He doesn’t want to do it. Jude’s training kicked in. ‘Put the gun down, Mr Neilson.’
Robert ignored him. ‘Move out of the way, Sergeant. Let me treat my wife with the respect she deserves. Let me blow her brains out the way her friend beat my friend Drew to death.’
‘This isn’t doing any good to anyone.’ Jude made his voice sound crisp and confident. Robert Neilson was a man who paid others to kill and the only thing Jude could do until he got closer was play on his weakness. ‘Don’t make things any worse for yourself.’
‘You’re a lying bitch, Miranda.’ Neilson ignored him. ‘You lied in court about Drew. It was your evidence that got that woman off. Well, she’s paid for killing him and you’re going to pay for protecting her. Sergeant O’Halloran. Stand aside or take the consequences.’
Ashleigh backed away from him and still Miranda clutched at her. She couldn’t move if she’d wanted to. He bit back the command he knew he couldn’t make, to tell her to stand aside and save herself. His heart raced. Hours before he’d cradled her in his arms in the warmth and security of his bed and now death stared her in the face.
But that failure to fire the second shot hinted at hope. If Robert was squeamish enough only to kill when he had no option, Jude had to make sure he thought he had a choice.
‘Robert,’ whimpered Miranda. ‘What are you saying? What do you mean?’
‘Drew was one of my best friends. You know me, Miranda. I’m like you. I’m loyal to my friends, to the death. You stood up for Elizabeth Bell. I’m here to stand up for the man she killed. You were warned.’
‘I thought you understood,’ she wailed. ‘I told you the truth because I trusted you. And I lied to them, to protect you. I didn’t tell them it was you who killed Ryan.’
‘Your mistake, then. Sergeant O’Halloran. Move.’ His tone had unmistakably sharpened.
Ashleigh took a step sideways and Miranda, still digging her fingers into her for grim death, moved, too. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Neilson.’ Even in the drama she kept her voice steady. ‘As you see. I can’t.’
Every second spent talking weakened Robert’s resolve. Jude edged away from the others, trying to draw Robert’s nervous gaze towards him and give Ashleigh a chance to get Miranda to some kind of safety. He’d have to deal with the gun himself but that was better than seeing one or both of them slaughtered in front of him. ‘Let this go, Mr Neilson. Robert. It’s done. Your wife has been punished enough.’
‘We disagree. Miranda, you lying bitch. For the last time. Let go of Sergeant O’Halloran, or you’ll have someone else’s death on your conscience.’
‘Drop the gun!’ Jude was a step closer now, but still too far away. And now Aida — oh God, not her, too — was leaning forward with a look of determination on her face.
An upstairs window crashed open and a twin’s voice cried out, incredulous: ‘Dad?’
In that second of distraction, both Jude and Aida moved.
The second bullet exploded from the gun.
‘Get down!’ Ashleigh shouted but Aida had already sent the gun spinning across the gravel. In appalled horror, Robert turned on her and Jude, lunging forward, sent him cr
ashing to the floor.
The man was easily subdued. Whatever his many qualities, he was no fighter. Jude had the cuffs on him in a moment and was back on his feet, looking around to see Miranda’s face, grey and appalled, to make sure Ashleigh was safe. Only then did he turn his attention to Aida, standing over her employer in shock.
‘I’m so sorry!’ she wept. ‘So sorry! But I couldn’t do it, Robert. I couldn’t let you kill Mrs Neilson.’
Twenty-Nine
‘All right.’ Faye bounced into the incident room, and all eyes were on her. Ruefully, Jude reminded himself that she wasn’t someone who cared too much about sparing someone else’s public humiliation. She’d been out of the office all day and he was mightily grateful for that. ‘As if I don’t have enough to do. I get back in after a long day and find you’ve got yourself and another officer involved in a firearms incident. Explain yourself.’
‘Read the debrief note.’ He was tired and wound up, and he’d been proved right, though not in the way he’d expected. Faye’s irritation was unjustified. ‘It’s all in there. We went to talk to Miranda and she confessed. And we know who wanted to kill her and why. I expect you know people who’ll find that interesting reading.’
She stared at him with narrowed eyes, looked around her at Ashleigh’s apprehensive gaze and Doddsy’s intrigued one, and must have decided that private was better after all. ‘All right. I take your point. Come along to my office and we’ll discuss it in private.’
He followed her down the corridor, still simmering at her lack of respect for his professional dignity. ‘Miranda Neilson killed someone, and allowed someone else to die. Okay, I hadn’t guessed about Robert, but I’d got to the point where I felt I had to haul her in. Sorry if that’s upset your standing with people more important than I am.’
‘That’s dangerously close to insubordination.’ She slammed the door behind them. ‘At least you’re both unhurt. That’s something.’
‘There would have been a hell of a lot of paperwork if one of us had been killed, eh?’
Faye let that pass. High-handed behaviour on her part, backchat on his. Stress made the calmest of adults bicker like kids in a playground. ‘Sit down. And tell me about Robert.’
‘He was at school with Drew Anderson. The man Elizabeth Bell killed. The two of them were very close.’
‘Did you know that when you went to Waterside Lodge this morning?’
‘No. Chris just looked it up for me. If you’d allowed me to dig into Robert’s background before, I might have found out earlier, and we could have saved a whole lot of trouble.’
‘I thought you understood why I gave you those instructions.’
He had understood, though he’d disagreed. ‘I’ve you to thank for it, as it happens. It was something you said about Robert never being there, being out of the way, that made me wonder. It was pretty obvious Miranda couldn’t have killed Ryan on her own. It needed someone else to do it. She sticks to her story about having walked him to the churchyard, but she says she called Robert for help and he insisted they had to kill him. She wanted to call us.’ Or so she’d said.
‘He had his identity to protect. Ryan would have known who the paymaster was, perhaps. Or not, but either way he couldn’t risk it.’
With distance, everything was clear. Robert had made sure he was out of the dale at crucial moments, but time must have over-run him. When criminals made mistakes it was because their plans didn’t work and they couldn’t adjust. ‘I think I first suspected there was something about him when she said she hadn’t told him about Elizabeth but he knew. That was odd. He must have planned it for a long time.’
‘He must have had hundreds of opportunities. Why wait five years?’ Faye fidgeted. she was still clearly irritated, but she must know Jude’s position was defensible. If Miranda had been the victim of an accident while they were waiting for Robert to walk into some trap spun from years of paperwork, there would have been a lot of questions to answer.
‘I can think of a couple of reasons. One is that the longer he left it, the less suspicion there would be. It took with years to kill Elizabeth, assuming she was actually murdered and assuming that the murderer was working on Robert’s instructions. The second is that he might have enjoyed being married to her. She struck me as nice enough, she’s a good looking woman, and she clearly loved and respected him.’ He made a face. Maybe Robert had loved his wife, in his way, and it had taken five years for the balance of his feelings for her and his thirst for revenge to tip against her.
‘I take it you have people trying to unpick the background to that?’
‘Of course. It may take a while to find everything, but we have Miranda’s confession and Robert’s attempt at killing Miranda. That’s enough to leave him locked up for a long time. In the meantime I expect we’ll be able to fill in a lot of background. I imagine we’ll find Robert knew George had a nephew he’d never seen, in Australia. He probably made inquiries over several years, in the guise of polite chat, and established no-one else knew him, either. He’ll have recruited Kyle Falkland, had him kill Elizabeth — high risk, but he got away with it. Then he brought him over, had him hang around in the dale, and the idea was he’d do away with Miranda and disappear. If anyone saw him, they’d think nothing of it. I imagine the plan was that he’d stay with George and people would get used to seeing him around. But it all went wrong when George wouldn’t play ball.’ He frowned. George’s death was certified as natural, but he was sure that Ryan, either accidentally or deliberately, had scared the old man into his fatal stroke. Some time, when he had a little more courage, he’d have to break that to Becca. ‘We’ll never know what happened between Ryan and Luke, but obviously Ryan felt he had no choice but to kill him, and after that Robert must have decided he couldn’t afford to wait any longer. So Ryan had to move quickly if he was to kill Miranda and get away without anyone realising he was about.’
‘Hmm. That sounds far-fetched.’
‘You think so? I’ll tell you what the clincher was, for me. Ollie’s phone.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes. According to Miranda, the calls that lured her into the trap were made from Ollie’s phone, which he’d lost. Ryan wouldn’t have risked going anywhere near the property. I thought Aida was involved.’
‘So you did.’ A smile played on Faye’s lips.
‘Yes. But no-one had a better opportunity to take it than someone in the family. Robert. He might even have sent the messages himself.’ The phone would probably be at the bottom of the lake, alongside the other one on which Robert might have relayed to Ryan the details of his own, and his family’s, movements.
Faye sat back and regarded him thoughtfully. ‘It’s fortunate for you Aida was there.’
‘I’m amazed at what she did. Extraordinary. A PA. She acted like she was a police officer.’
‘Jude.’ Faye’s expression had been irritated, then pensive, and suddenly became smug. ‘Really? You hadn’t guessed?’
‘Guessed what?’
‘Robert isn’t the only person who takes a long view. Aida’s a serving officer with the Met. She’s been working with Robert for the past three years. I don’t think she’s blown her cover, although he’s bound to sack her after this. But she’s probably done enough already to implicate a lot of other people, along with Robert himself, in major fraud. But of course, I didn’t tell you that.’
Jude felt suddenly light-hearted. There had been a moment when he’d feared for Ashleigh and he didn’t know what he could have done for her if Robert had had the nerve of an executioner rather than an executive. Aida’s intervention had been the difference and they all owed her a debt of gratitude, even if they’d never get the chance to repay it. ‘Someone will be getting a bill for the damage to my car, that’s for sure.’
‘That’s what your insurance is for.’ She fidgeted a little. ‘Off you go. You’ve got a hell of a lot of work to do on Robert Neilson, and I have a hell of a job to explain it. So let’s just ge
t on with it.’
‘Are you all right?’ Jude placed his empty glass on the table. Around them the group of detectives, who’d decided on an impromptu night out in unspoken celebration of a case solved, were laughing at some joke or other, but Ashleigh hadn’t been listening.
‘I’m a bit distracted, that’s all.’ She sighed.
‘I know. It’s been a hell of a day.’
The two of them had settled at the edge of the group in the first place, and neither had joined in the general conviviality. ‘No doubt we’ll have the health and safety people on our backs at some stage, making sure we’re not too stressed. It would be too much to ask for three days off to recover, I suppose.’ She forced a laugh. ‘Not when there’s all that work to be done.’
‘I don’t think we need to do much more to have Robert done up like a kipper, but there you go. It’ll be good to get him for everything he’s done.’ Jude paused. ‘Do you want another drink, or shall we just slip out unnoticed?’
Ashleigh picked up her almost-empty glass. It wasn’t often she contemplated using alcohol as a crutch, but today was different. Common sense won out. She put the glass down. ‘Better not. Let’s go.’
‘Are you sure you’re all right?’
She shook her head without thinking about it. There had been other perilous situations in her time in the police. There had been drink or drug-crazed men with knives, furious women who’d kicked and punched her as she tried to help them. There had been a car driving at her one dark night on the beat, and a long fall into the freezing River Eden in a vain attempt to stop a suicide. All had shaken her, but she didn’t think any of them had the effect on her that Robert had done as she’d stood as a human shield to the terrified Miranda. Every time she closed her eyes she’d see his shaking hand and the mean, menacing circle of the gun’s deadly barrel, feel Miranda’s desperate fingers digging into her shoulders. ‘No, probably not. Let’s go home.’
