Brotherly Blood

by Jean G. Goodhind

  ‘Girl?’ Honey frowned.

  ‘The girl they found buried in a mud slide. I expect he’s up here about that.’

  It was nearing nine thirty and she was tired when Geoffrey Monmouth entered the bar. She recognised him purely from the look thrown him by the landlady, one that darted to him then back to her.

  She placed him in his early fifties, tall though overweight and of tired features. The toes of his shoes were scuffed and he was in danger of tripping over the bags beneath his eyes.

  Shutting the door firmly behind him he leaned against it, looked right at Honey and nodded.

  After ordering himself a soft drink, he came and sat opposite her.

  Honey felt the landlady’s eyes weighing them up, perhaps salivating that a lovers’ tryst might be going on here. Some chance! One glare from Honey and she turned away.

  Honey turned back to Geoffrey, cradling her drink tightly as though warming it through might improve the taste. His eyes, even the shape of his face seemed oddly familiar and she was instantly on her guard.

  ‘I read the newspaper’s apology,’ she said to him. ‘Caspar was grateful for that, but it still doesn’t excuse why you used his name in the first place. You said you had an informant. Can you give me a name?’

  She noticed him knitting his fingers together. At the same time he looked at her, then away again. Probably embarrassment. He didn’t look like the sort with something to hide – unless he was a consummate actor.

  ‘I didn’t mean any harm. It’s just that I had a scoop and thought the details were bona fide. My source assured me they were.’

  ‘But you didn’t check.’

  He looked down at his hands, stilling his nervous fingers as he did so. ‘My source told me he was close to the family, especially to Lord Torrington. And I was...well...to put it mildly, in need of funds fast. I’d been gambling and drinking and got involved with this woman...’

  Suddenly Honey realised what he was really getting at.

  ‘Am I getting this right? You usually pay for information but on this occasion you were paid to print what you were told?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Who was it? Give me a name?’

  She couldn’t help eyeing this man with the utmost disdain.

  ‘Christiansen. Dominic Christiansen.’

  Suddenly he seemed to look past her, his jaw tensing as he did so.

  Honey glanced in the same direction. She saw nobody, only the stairs leading up to the first floor rooms.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he said. He had recognised the boyfriend from the time he’d watched them both on their weekend away at the cottage. He’d faded into the shadows then because he knew the security services were close by. He would do the same now.

  She presumed he was heading for the men’s lavatory. Ten minutes went by. He didn’t come back and she thought she heard his old truck start up and shove off.

  Oh well, she thought to herself. It’s not the first time I’ve been stood up.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Her meeting with Geoffrey Monmouth had both upset and angered her. She badly wanted to phone Dominic Christiansen and have it out with him, but she’d omitted to add his number to her phone and she’d left his card back at the Green River Hotel. Besides, her phone’s battery had died.

  She found the door, inserted the key only to find it was unlocked. That in itself was no big deal in an off-road inn where visitors and predators were thin on the ground.

  Naturally, because it overlooked the fields at the rear of the inn, the room was in darkness. No big surprise, but there was more than that. She knew someone was in the room.

  Heart beating wildly, she stood with her back to the door, listening for the sound of breathing. Female instinct is a funny thing and not in the least bit magical. Honey’s belief was that the female subconscious picks up on certain things even before the more physical senses kick in. Sight, taste, touch, sound and smell. It was the last one she was picking up on; a smell she’d come across once before.

  Her heart was motoring and her legs had turned to jelly. The only weapon she had to hand was her overnight bag. Was the weight of her makeup bag likely to knock an assailant aside? Quite Possibly. So did she go on or back off?

  Her hand tightened on the sturdy handles of her bag. The decision was made.

  On!

  She fingered the wall for a light switch, found one and switched it on.

  ‘What the hell do you think you are doing here, lady? I told you to back off. What is it about that statement that you don’t understand?’

  Doherty was sitting in the only chair in the room, elbows resting on knees, thunderous expression turned squarely on her. It was like being faced with a loaded shotgun; she was in his sights and about to get blasted.

  In three swift strides he was towering over her. His expression was angry. ‘Get a good hold on your bag, get back down the stairs, into your car and get out of here.’

  ‘Steve, I am not a child!’

  ‘I want you out of here.’

  His attitude made her see red. ‘You have no right to order me out of here! I will not go!’

  She knew instinctively that his intention was to bundle her and her bag out of the door, but she was ready for him. Tightening her grip, she swung her bag back and brought it forward in a wide arc. The bag whacked his left arm. A normal person would have staggered even just a little bit, but Doherty was well built and strong.

  His fingers closed like a vice around her wrist. Her anger boiled over and she found herself swinging in a wide arc with her handbag.

  Doherty was too quick for her and she was the one sent sprawling on the bed.

  Before she had chance to catch her breath, he had locked the door.

  ‘Now just you listen to me,’ he growled. ‘There are things happening here that you know nothing of.’

  ‘You are so right!’ she shouted. ‘And that’s why I’m here. To find out what the devil’s been going on. And before you tell me yet again that I’m out of my depth and it’s none of my business, things have gone on a bit since Caspar drew me in on this. It’s about me, Steve. It’s also about my father and a lethal legacy. Somebody is out to kill me and I want to know who it is.’

  By now she had recovered from being knocked off her feet and was off the bed, each accusation accompanied by her finger stabbing at his chest. Who cared if her next door neighbour had heard their raised voices?

  The tension she had been under finally boiled over. Tears streamed down her face.

  On swiping her hand across her eyes, smearing her makeup in the process, she saw that the anger had gone from his face. He was looking at her thoughtfully. She was instantly taken back to when they had first met. He’d looked at her like that back then too.

  ‘I didn’t think you cared,’ he said softly.

  ‘About my father? Of course I care. Just because I don’t remember much about him, this whole thing has got to me. I want to know what he really did – something bad obviously, that somebody would want to kill me. I mean, what’s it got to do with me? I barely knew my father and I certainly didn’t know much about his job and neither did my mother for that matter.

  He sat down again in the chair, hands clasped in front of him.

  She shook her head. ‘I find it so hard to believe.’

  His eyes locked with hers. Honey sensed again that feeling of being weighed up and wondered exactly how much Doherty had known about all this. She had to ask him.

  ‘I get the feeling I was set up from the start. Is that what you think?’

  He trailed a thumb across his chin as he thought it over before coming to a decision.

  ‘I think Geoffrey Monmouth was used as a filter for a government agency, though probably didn’t know it. Sometimes they’d feed him outright lies, but most of the time he was fed small things that might trigger other things. It’s amazing what you read in the papers.’

  For a moment his face creased into a smile. His complexion lo
oked grey and there were lines beneath his eyes. We’re all tired on this case, she thought to herself.

  ‘So Caspar was set up.’

  He nodded. ‘Partly.’

  Honey frowned. ‘Partly? What does that mean?

  He shook his head. A faint smile played around lips that a romantic novel would describe as sensual. A respectable girl would have been told that such lips were best avoided. Was she a respectable girl? Not where Doherty was concerned.

  This was no time for salacious musings. She wanted answers and had the impression that Doherty knew more than he was letting on.

  ‘Okay, so they used Geoffrey for their own purposes.’

  ‘Define ‘they’,’ she said, her tears abated and her resolve toughened.

  ‘MI5. MI6. Either of them. The people your father worked for.’

  ‘Just one thing I have to point out,’ he said. ‘I spoke to Geoffrey Monmouth down the road at Holmleigh guest house. He was very apologetic and said he’d published the information in all good faith. He went round to apologise to Caspar. Did you know that?’

  Honey was stunned. She shook her head dumbly.

  ‘He didn’t mention it.’ She frowned. ‘You just said that you met Geoffrey staying at a guest house?’ She shook her head again. ‘That can’t be right. Geoffrey Monmouth is here. He’s staying in the other letting room. I met him earlier...’

  ‘How did you contact him?’

  ‘There was a message waiting when I arrived at Torrington Towers. My battery was down and the landlines were disrupted by the storm. I went to the phone box to contact him but somebody told me he wasn’t there and gave me the number of where he was staying. Here,’ she said, jerking her chin.

  Doherty sprang to his feet. She saw his hand pass swiftly to a lump beneath his jacket. Her heart almost stopped beating. Since when had he carried a gun? Policemen didn’t carry guns, not unless they were in a special unit or had been given special dispensation.

  ‘Which way,’ he asked his hand already on the door handle.

  ‘To the front,’ Honey said softly, weakly waving her index finger towards the front of the building.

  After warning her to stay put, Doherty vanished through the door though not before ordering her to lock it behind him.

  He wasn’t gone long. When he came back he confirmed that the man calling himself Geoffrey Monmouth was gone. The red truck was gone. They both knew that the man Honey had been talking to was not Geoffrey Monmouth.

  Honey took a deep breath, scared at how close she’d been to the Tarot Man. ‘I would still like it confirmed,’ she said falteringly. ‘Just so I can sleep tonight.’

  ‘Have you still got that message?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Phone him.’

  ‘My battery’s flat. Remember?’

  He shook his head. ‘I would prefer you didn’t use mine. There’s no knowing what electronic devices our false Monmouth might have.’

  ‘There’s a payphone outside.’

  ‘Goodness. Two in one day!’

  ‘Let’s see what we can do.’

  Honey took the card from the pocket of her jacket.

  Doherty had got up from the chair and positioned himself between Honey and the door. Now he moved aside.

  ‘Right,’ she said all strident confidence and grim determination.

  ‘You’re coming with me. I’ve no wish to wander outside by myself.’

  On the way out, they passed back through the bar where the landlady was wiping down the tables. She looked up when she heard them, surprise registering when she saw Honey was with another man, not the man in the front letting room.

  ‘Well I never!’ Her expression said it all. Honey was a hussy, worse still perhaps.

  ‘I’m just going outside to use the phone,’ Honey said to her.

  It was possible that she might offer her phone to use, but neither Honey nor Doherty wanted that. A phone box was more impersonal and not so traceable.

  ‘I weren’t going to offer you one,’ remarked the landlady in a throaty voice that betrayed her cigarette habit. ‘No point paying for one when there’s a phone box outside, only across the yard in fact.’

  She purposely addressed Doherty as though informing him that Honey could find it all by herself without undue supervision.

  Catching on to that fact, he said, ‘I’m her bodyguard. No knowing what dangers lurk outside village pubs at night.’

  What he said seemed to strike a chord with her.

  ‘I know why you’re really here,’ the landlady remarked in her strikingly loud voice. ‘You’re after the man who’s been killing these girls. He’s the one you’ve got to look out for. Seems there’s been more than one girl done to death in the same way. Buries them in clay, he does. Moulds it all over them like they’re made from it.’

  ‘We won’t be long,’ Doherty said to her.

  ‘Right. But if you’re not back in ten minutes I’m calling the police.’

  ‘I am the police.’

  Compared to the red telephone boxes that used to be found on the corner of every city street, this one was in tip top condition and smelled of polish and disinfectant. Honey guessed that somebody in the village made it their personal job to take care of it. Perhaps it was the pub landlady, though she wasn’t too sure about that.

  The landlady at the bed and breakfast didn’t sound too happy about getting Geoffrey Monmouth to the phone.

  ‘I’m a woman alone. I don’t hold with knocking on my male guests’ bedroom at this late an hour.’

  ‘It’s terribly urgent,’ said Honey. ‘A matter of life and death in fact.’

  Her response that she would do as asked was begrudging. Honey heard her slippers scuffing away from the phone. It seemed she was gone an age. At last a groggy-sounding Geoffrey Monmouth was on the phone. Honey duly asked him for a description of the man who had passed him the information regarding Caspar’s brother.

  ‘Smartly dressed bloke,’ he said. ‘Upper crust type but foreign – kind of. Spoke well though.’

  ‘How tall?’

  ‘I don’t know for sure. I’d guess about five feet eleven. Perhaps six feet.’

  ‘What about his hair? What about his eyes?’

  ‘Very fair hair, blue eyes, about thirty-eight years old and athletic, gangly but strong; looked as though he could run a marathon without a sweat.’

  Honey was immediately uneasy. He was describing Dominic Christiansen.

  ‘Mr Monmouth. Do you know a middle aged man and portly, of average build who wears tweed jackets and has a nervous habit of intertwining his fingers?’

  Judging by the immediate silence the real Mr Geoffrey Monmouth was totally confused.

  ‘I’m not sure. I’d have to think about it.’

  ‘Do you look like that, Mr Monmouth?’

  It was a silly question and got her a reprimanding look from Doherty. They’d both made up their minds that the gentleman who’d fled the front letting room at The Black Dog was not Geoffrey Monmouth.

  ‘No. I’m not middle aged and I’m not portly.’

  He sounded quite affronted.

  Honey thanked him and put down the phone.

  Doherty was eyeing her expectantly. ‘Well?’

  ‘He doesn’t know anyone who looked like the man I met here.’

  Doherty looked thoughtfully over his shoulder. ‘I already know that.’

  ‘How did you find out about Geoffrey Monmouth?’

  ‘Government departments are notorious for not speaking to each other. That fact also applies to their computer systems. The key is to grab some amateur hacker who knows how to get them to talk.’

  ‘And you know somebody who can do that?’

  Doherty grinned. ‘Yeah. Your daughter.’

  The trill of his phone pierced the air only seconds after he’d said it.

  ‘Your daughter,’ he said to Honey. ‘She wants to talk to you. And after that she wants to talk to me.’

  Recalling their trun
cated conversation, Honey grabbed the phone.

  ‘Mother! Are you okay?’ Lindsey sounded frantic.

  ‘Of course I am. I have my own bodyguard to look out for me.’

  ‘He needs to.’ Lindsey’s voice was tight with fear. ‘You may want to sit down when I tell you this. Better still, put it on loud speaker and Steve Doherty can catch you when you faint. And Mother, do remember to recharge your phone regularly and not wait for it to run out.’

  ‘What is it? What is it?’

  ‘You’re going to be shocked.’

  ‘Get on with it.’

  ‘It’s powerful stuff.’

  Honey and Doherty’s heads touched as they both attempted to listen to what Lindsey had to say.

  ‘It’s Caspar. Caspar is at the bottom of this.’

  The rest of what she said made Honey’s blood run cold.

  The moment the conversation was over Doherty was shepherding her towards the door.

  ‘I think I might kill Caspar when I get hold of him,’ he muttered through clenched teeth.

  ‘I’m quite capable of doing that myself,’ muttered Honey, her blood like frozen popsicles in her veins.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  It was easy to hide in London. There were so many people, so many places in which to get lost.

  The man who had posed as a middle aged journalist was annoyed he had to run. He was sure he could have persuaded Honey Driver to come with him if her policeman boyfriend hadn’t shown up. He’d seen him on that first occasion when they’d stayed at the cottage. He had hoped to get closer then but the fact the boyfriend was there plus Christiansen loitering close by, would have been foolhardy.

  He was in no doubt that his appearance and whereabouts would be instantly passed on to MI5 by those two. Not that his appearance would stay the same. Altering one’s appearance was vital if one wanted to keep one step ahead of one’s pursuers.

  He chose a hotel in Paddington where he could stay for one night’s rest without attracting undue attention. Paddington was a place people passed through on the way to somewhere else. Just like him.

  After purchasing a newspaper from a shop close by, he settled in, opened the paper and read the details of what he had done. The Express carried the headline in thick black type. He didn’t bother to read the details. He already knew them. The Tarot Man always kills when the weather is bad; pouring down, just like it was now.