‘Alone, DC Brady?’
He nodded.
‘Then you’d best go and do your job. Don’t turn around, DC Brady. I’ll know if you do.’
Brady froze. Whatever it was had gone from the middle of his back. He swallowed hard, wondering if he dared to turn around.
‘Well, go on then,’ Karen said. ‘They’re getting way ahead of you.’
Stiff-legged, Brady walked on. When he did dare to look around he saw only an empty street. He was torn between chasing after the girl and watching over the kids, and furious with himself for being such a wuss. Not sure what else to do, he followed George and called DI Kendall.
‘I’m guessing you just met Karen Parker,’ Kendall told him. ‘Think yourself lucky, Col. The last two men to get that close to her ended up dead.’
THIRTY-EIGHT
Andy drove past Ted’s house. Ted’s car wasn’t there and he felt slightly relieved. He had to act, but not just yet. That morning he’d followed Frank Baker’s advice and handed everything over to Mac, but he still couldn’t rest easy. He noticed that the For Sale sign had been taken down. So Ted was no longer planning to move. That was a sudden decision. In a way it just reinforced Andy’s suspicions: the rest of Kath Eebry’s bones must still be at the house. The publicity and excitement must have made it impossible for him to dispose of them and so now he’d decided that he dare not move.
Andy hated his job at that moment, but he also knew in that instant what he had to do. Ted Eebry had been his friend.
What to do with the envelope Karen had given him? So many things went through George’s mind on the trip home, but it seemed that Ursula had decided for them. She had texted Mac and said they needed to see him. Now, tonight, but not at Hill House. By the time they reached home, it was arranged. They would meet DI MacGregor on the cliff path in half an hour. They dumped their bags and went back outside, slipping across the lawn on to the public footpath and heading towards Frantham and the De Barr hotel.
Mac arrived about ten minutes after they did.
‘We can’t stop,’ Ursula said. ‘Cheryl is a stickler for meal times, you know.’
‘I know,’ Mac agreed. He took the envelope from them. ‘Have you opened this?’
‘No, we thought best not to. We just wanted it gone.’
‘How are you both?’ Mac asked. ‘I’m sorry for lately . . . I’ve been clumsy. I’m sorry.’
‘We’re OK,’ George said. ‘Don’t worry about it. We’ll be all right. Right, better go.’
Mac watched as they walked away, wondering if he should offer to go with them, anxious that they should not be out alone, despite the fact it was only a ten-minute walk back to Hill House and he could see from where he stood that the path was empty even of other walkers. He watched them anyway, and it was only as they left the path and returned to the gardens of Hill House that he turned back towards his car.
Only a few miles from where they stood on the cliff top, Haines was preparing to board his yacht. He was in a fine fury. Karen Parker was now far from his mind; the new target of his rage was Jerry Mason.
Santos and Tomas were ready to leave. The address of Louise Mason, Jerry’s ex-wife, was in their hands, as were instructions to deal with both her and Jerry. And they were to do it any way they liked, Haines didn’t care.
Santos was relishing the idea.
Haines warned them: ‘Don’t come back with the job half done.’
THIRTY-NINE
Mac had been about to call DI Kendall when his phone rang and Kendall saved him the bother. Mac found himself being summoned to Dorchester and an hour later was sitting in a hastily assembled incident room in the bar of a rather smart hotel.
‘Jerry Mason,’ Kendall said when he met Mac in the lobby.
‘Your undercover man.’
‘Not any more. He made a rather dramatic exit about three o’clock this afternoon. Oh, and your Karen was spotted meeting her brother out of school. I put a man on point, Karen spotted him. I sent him home to change his pants.’
‘She’s not my Karen,’ Mac said. ‘And I know.’
Kendall looked at the package he held. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘The envelope. My man sent me pictures. What’s in it?’
‘That,’ Mac said, ‘is a good question, but Karen seemed to think it would be effective against Haines.’
Kendall sniffed. ‘Doesn’t smell like garlic,’ he said. ‘Right, come on through and I’ll introduce you.’
There were nine people present in the little conference room. Mac didn’t catch all their names, but one of them was called Didcott and it seemed he had been responsible for Jerry. It was also obvious that he was hopping mad, though Mac was not immediately sure if it was with Jerry or with another man who, Mac gathered, had been responsible for not agreeing to a more dignified exit from Haines’s crew.
They showed him pictures of Jerry’s precipitate escape captured from CCTV.
‘Mobile phone footage is already making it on to YouTube,’ Kendall said, ‘and the local media will lap up everything else.’
They also had pictures of Karen talking to Ursula and George. Mac laid the contents of the envelope on the table. The man called Didcott shuffled through the pages. He stopped at one that showed a list of figures; one group had been circled.
‘You did this?’ he asked of Mac.
‘No. Karen must have done. It’s the same set of numbers as were on the slip of paper Jerry gave to Stan Holden and I gave to Kendall.’
From the glances cast around the table, Mac gathered that not everyone was au fait with the Stan Holden connection. He decided he would leave that for Kendall to explain.
‘You have no idea where she got this from?’ Didcott asked.
Mac shook his head. ‘I think she believes it will bring Haines down and that will protect her brother. That’s all I know.’
‘And that’s assumption,’ someone else commented.
Mac shrugged. ‘Is it a correct assumption?’
‘Oh yes,’ Didcott approved. ‘And taken with Jerry Mason’s testimony it will do a great deal more. So we’d better make bloody sure Jerry survives to testify.’
‘How do we know he will? If he’s gone rogue . . .’
‘If he had he’d have stayed with Haines,’ Didcott said irritably. ‘He ran because he’d reached his limits, most likely because he knew his cover was compromised. He’d reached out to us three times and each time we let him down. What the hell else was he supposed to do?’
‘Does he have family?’ Mac asked quietly. ‘It’s the way Haines keeps his people in line. His ultimate sanction.’
‘Very poetic,’ Didcott said. ‘His parents are dead, no siblings or close family, but he does have an ex-wife. She divorced him and we lost track of her. I believe Jerry did too.’
‘Haines will know where she is,’ Mac said.
FORTY
Somehow, Jerry had believed there would be more time. That he’d be able to call Louise and warn her and she would listen to him and get away somewhere before the danger could get to her.
But here, the luck that had stayed with him for the rest of the day seemed to have run dry. The phone rang and there was no answer. Louise was not home so she could not be warned.
Three times he tried and three times the phone rang out into empty space. In desperation he tried her parents’ old number but someone else answered the phone.
They had moved a year ago and no, the new tenant did not know where, and why should he tell Jerry if he did?
‘Who are you?’ the man asked, worried by Jerry’s tone and his insistence. ‘Who the hell are you?’
Jerry had hung up. What to do, what to do?
He thought of calling Didcott, but didn’t know if he could trust the man to help after all the recent failures to assist him. He needed help, someone who could get through to Louise before Haines’s men arrived.
He could steal another car, drive up there, hope to stay ahead of them.
No, too risky. Hai
nes had resources. Fast cars, probably men close to where Louise lived that he could call upon. Jerry had already wasted too much time. In the end he could think of only one place to go for help, and he wasn’t even sure where that was, only that it was somewhere in Frantham.
He found himself another vehicle and drove along the coast road to the little seaside town, wasted even more time looking for a particular house, the street or the number of which he didn’t know, only that Haines had referred to it once as something Lodge. He knew it was Victorian, but so was half the town. In the end persistence paid off and he found himself in Newell Street facing Peverill Lodge and was sure then he had heard that name before. This was where Stan Holden was holed up.
It was late and the lights were out, but he knocked on the door anyway, glancing side to side along the deserted street.
Someone open the bloody door!
Slow footsteps told him someone had heard and the light went on in the hall. The door opened a crack and Jerry pushed it all the way, knocking Stan almost off his feet.
‘What the fuck are you doing here?’
‘You look a bloody mess.’
‘Thanks to you and frigging Santos.’ Stan looked past him suspiciously, as though Santos might be waiting outside.
Wearily, Jerry shoved the door closed. ‘I don’t want trouble. I just need your help.’
‘And why the hell should I help you?’
From the landing Rina listened to the angry voices coming from the hall. Stan sounded pained and distressed and the other voice was not a familiar one.
Oh, Stan, don’t you know about putting the chain on the door? That’s what it’s there for.
She tightened the belt of her dressing gown and crept softly down the stairs on slippered feet, her husband’s old cricket bat clasped tightly in her hand. The voices had moved from hall to dining room now and the stranger’s voice sounded all the more insistent and strained. Who was he?
Rina crept across the hall, careful to keep out of sight of the door, moving forward soft and fast. Stan stood a little way into the room and the stranger just inside the doorway, his back to her. Rina didn’t hesitate: the bat came down across his shoulders and head and Jerry Mason was felled.
‘Rina! What the hell are you doing?’ Stan bent over the injured man.
‘I thought you were in trouble. Who on earth is he?’
‘His name is Jerry Mason. He came here looking for help.’
‘Oh.’ Rina parked the bat against the door and helped Stan lift her dazed victim to his feet and then into a chair. ‘You’re the undercover policeman,’ she said. ‘Oh, don’t fuss, Stan, I didn’t hit him that hard. I wasn’t really trying.’
Jerry held his head in his hands and then tried to look at Rina. ‘They’ll be going after Louise,’ he said. ‘Haines will have sent them by now, and she won’t answer her phone.’
‘You’d best call Mac,’ Stan said. ‘Tell him to get over here. We can’t handle this one on our own.’
FORTY-ONE
‘We’ve got an address for the ex-wife,’ Mac said. ‘I’ve got Jerry Mason here and he’s sure Haines will have sent men after her by now. He can’t raise her by phone so it’s possible she’s away.’
He dictated the address to Kendall. ‘Get the locals involved, but tell them they’ll need an armed response unit.’
‘Jerry Mason’s with you? Where the hell are you anyway?’
Mac told him. ‘And you’d best send an ambulance while you’re at it. Rina crowned him with a cricket bat. He’s a little concussed.’
‘I apologized,’ Rina said. ‘Mac, will it be all right now? There shouldn’t be more bloodshed.’
‘Kendall will take care of it,’ he said. He sat down wearily at Rina’s kitchen table. Eliza’s first aid skills had been called into play once again, but Jerry still looked sick and Mac felt he should be somewhere with a proper medic.
‘I should be there,’ Jerry objected.
‘You can drive that fast? Jerry, even without a concussion it would take the best part of three hours. Time to let someone else take responsibility. She’ll be OK. Kendall will ring me as soon as there’s anything to tell.’
A few miles distant, events had been set in motion on several fronts. Didcott had taken control and somehow everything was moving that bit faster because of that. Warrants had been issued for Haines and Vashinsky and the coastguard had been mobilized to aid in the arrests on The Spirit of Unity.
Local police were called upon to find Louise Mason and an armed response unit would be in position within the hour.
Didcott rubbed his hands in satisfaction. He now wanted to speak with Jerry Mason.
‘He doesn’t want to speak with you,’ Kendall told him. ‘He said that explicitly. Not until he knows Louise is safe. Besides, he’s on his way to the local hospital. It seems Rina Martin mistook him for the enemy and wrapped a cricket bat round his ear.’
‘Sir?’ one of the sergeants called to Kendall. ‘It’s DI Barnes, he wants a word.’
Kendall nodded and went off to liaise with the armed response unit heading for Louise Mason’s home.
After that it was pretty much a waiting game. Local officers were dispatched to protect Jerry Mason at the hospital, and Mac went to join the teams being organized by Didcott. Rina hoped he would be there to view Haines’s arrest and, as she sat drinking tea with Stan and the other members of her little family, she could not help but feel a sense of anti-climax and regret that she could do no more.
FORTY-TWO
Louise Mason worked shifts at a local garage and convenience store. Technically, she was currently working the two ’til ten, but, as always, the place was short-staffed and she’d agreed to a couple of hours’ overtime, so it was midnight before she could even consider getting away. At half past midnight, her manager finally arrived to relieve her. She had to find another bloody job, Louise thought. It was beyond a joke.
She was about to get into her car when a police patrol pulled on to the forecourt and someone got out and called her name.
‘Mrs Mason?’
‘Yes?’
‘Mrs Mason, my name is DI Barnes. I need to have a word.’
Tomas James and Santos had arrived at Louise Mason’s house just after ten and parked a few hundred yards down the road. They had gone around the back of the little house, a two up two down at the end of a row. A light was on in the kitchen, but it was soon evident there was no one home. Satisfied that they could return without being observed by nosy neighbours, they went back to their car and prepared to wait.
‘You reckon Jerry will show?’
Santos shrugged. ‘He’ll show. He’s still soft on her and he knows how the boss deals with disloyalty.’ Santos laughed. ‘I bloody hope he’ll show. He makes us go looking for him and I’ll not be best pleased.’
‘I don’t understand.’ Louise shook her head vehemently. ‘I’ve not seen my ex-husband for three years. This has nothing to do with me.’
Patiently, DI Barnes explained again that it did not matter. This was not a matter of logic. The threat was real.
‘I told him it was the job or me,’ Louise said. ‘He chose . . . and now you’re telling me . . .’
‘Suspect car about a hundred yards down from your position. Can we get the neighbours out?’
‘Next door have been evacuated. The neighbours in the next one down are on holiday. Do you have a visual on the car?’
‘Two occupants matching the descriptions.’
A car drove slowly down past Santos and Tomas and parked outside Louise’s house.
‘They’ve spotted you. Get yourself inside and we’ll move in.’
A female got out of Louise’s car and walked up to the front door. Went inside.
‘Wait until they start to move. Then on my mark . . .’
It took ten minutes before the two men in the car made their move. Then Santos got out, followed by Tomas, and the signal was given to move in.
‘Armed Police! G
et down on the floor! Get down on the floor! Hands where I can see them, get down on the floor!’
Officers surrounded them. Tomas James knelt beside the car. For a moment Santos stood, uncertain, then he lowered his hands, smiled at Tomas and went for his gun. Moments later he lay dead in the road, blood pooling, slick around his head.
‘It’s over,’ Mac said. ‘She’s fine. And the coastguard are preparing to board Haines’s boat. Didcott wants to see you now. Can I tell him yes?’
Jerry turned his face away, trying to regain some semblance of control. ‘I’ll talk to him,’ he said. ‘I’ll see him now.’
FORTY-THREE
Ted was not surprised when Andy knocked on his door the next afternoon. He stood aside and let him come in and then led the way to the kitchen. Andy sat down at the table and Ted filled the kettle.
‘Ted, I—’
Ted Eebry waved him into silence. ‘Don’t apologize. I knew this day would come, I suppose. I just wanted to see the girls grown up and settled. I couldn’t bear . . . couldn’t bear to think of them being dumped somewhere they weren’t wanted. Missing me as well as their mam. Maybe even being separated. So I hid what had happened. I said I didn’t know where Kath had gone.’
‘Ted, I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t be doing this.’
‘Well I’m glad it’s you. Really I am. It’s better to see a friendly face.’
‘Stacey and Gail will hate me.’ It was such a selfish thing to say, but he couldn’t help himself.
‘Not if I tell them not to. It’s not your fault. Really it’s not.’
‘What happened, Ted? What happened to Kath?’
Ted Eebry filled the teapot and brought it to the table. He seemed very calm now. Andy was anything but.
‘It was in the garden,’ he said. ‘May twelfth, sixteen years ago. She’d been out there with me helping in the allotment and that was something she never did. She wasn’t a gardener, our Kath, but I knew she had something on her mind and she needed time to get it straight in her head before she could tell me. I spent the day thinking all manner of stuff, Andy, working myself up into a sweat over what might be nothing. And then, just as we were packing up for the day she told me. She’d had a bit of a fling with a man she’d met at work. It was nothing, over in a few weeks, and she felt badly about it, but she said she’d found it exciting and she said the excitement seemed to have gone out of our marriage lately. She had finished with him and I said it was alright. I forgave her. It didn’t matter.’
Cause of Death Page 19
