Grandpa hated religion.
‘Pack of hypocrites!’ he’d rant if the subject ever came up. Linda went to church regularly, and Grandpa constantly goaded her, for the fun of it.
‘Would you believe me if I said I could fly?’ he asked one day as Linda served them both lemon drizzle cake after a fishing trip.
‘No, of course not, Xavier,’ she answered, clearly knowing what was coming.
‘No hard evidence, right? So why do you believe in bloody Jesus?’
On occasions like this, she smiled at him broadly and warmly, refusing to be drawn into an argument that she would lose every time. Zac liked to listen to them bickering; it was as if he had parents. Grandpa and Linda bickered over most things, but it was affectionate and habitual. They’d stopped in the weeks leading up to his grandfather’s death. Grandpa had spent more time on his own in his room. Zac should have known something was wrong.
He got out of bed, opened his door and walked along the hall to Grandpa’s room. It was just as the old man had left it. He didn’t turn on the lights; the moon gave all the glow he needed, illuminating the room in pre-industrial romanticism. He made out the urn that Brian had placed on the mantel this afternoon, after a blazing row with Linda. He’d overheard them. He hadn’t caught everything, but it had been enough for him to send them both home.
They’d been discussing the female detective, and it hadn’t been favourable.
‘She can sniff something, Brian. She’s not going to let go,’ he heard Linda say.
‘There’s nothing to sniff.’
‘The safe?’
‘He asked me to do it. It’ll never be found.’
Zac had guessed all along that his grandfather had ordered Brian to get rid of his belongings; no one else could have done it.
‘I don’t like the way she knows things,’ Linda said.
‘She knows nothing. It’s her job to snoop. There’s been no crime here, Lin.’
‘She said that if she finds out I’ve withheld anything, I’ll be in trouble. I should just tell her everything.’
‘There’s nothing to tell. It’s private stuff; family stuff.’
‘Why did he have to go in such a spectacular fashion, the selfish old bastard? He’s left a hell of a mess.’
Zac had entered the kitchen silently, the way he had been taught to stalk a deer.
‘I think I’ve heard enough, and I think both of you should leave.’
‘Zachary!’
Linda’s face had gone purple and Brian had stood up, using his brawn as he always did to intimidate, but it didn’t work on Zac.
‘How much of our conversation did you hear, Zachary?’ Linda asked quietly.
‘It doesn’t matter. They’ve found the safe, so I’ll know soon enough what’s in it.’
Brian took a step forward, but Zac stood tall. ‘You don’t intimidate me, Brian. You might have been my grandfather’s lackey, but you’re not mine. Get out. Both of you, get out!’
His voice had boomed, startling the dogs, and they scurried to their baskets.
‘I’m surrounded by liars! I always have been!’ His face crumpled and Linda moved towards him. ‘Stay away from me!’ he cried. ‘Give me your keys, I know you have spares. I want you out. From now on, I’m locking the doors. You’re no longer needed.’
He held out his hand. Linda and Brian looked at each other, then back at Zachary, knowing he was serious. They each retrieved their spare key from coats that hung behind the door. The kettle began to whistle.
Now, Zac touched a finger to the urn. It was cold, like a dead body. He hadn’t looked inside. A tear slipped down his face and he wiped it with his dressing gown sleeve.
‘I miss you, Grandpa,’ he whispered.
He walked to the wardrobe and opened the doors. He looked at the space where the safe had once stood, then glanced up and touched a jacket. He parted some clothes and peered beyond. There was nothing on the floor, but above was a cupboard, and he opened it. Inside was an old cardboard box that looked sealed. There was also a black hat box and a small suitcase.
He took down the box and slid his fingernail underneath the tape. He left it on the floor while he walked to the lamp by Grandpa’s bed and flicked it on. His eyes took a little time to adjust, then he settled on the floor again with the box.
Inside, he found packets of photos and baby memorabilia. His own first shoes were labelled carefully, and there was a silver hip flask with his initials engraved: ZOF, Zachary Oliver Fitzgerald. He popped it into his dressing gown pocket and opened a sleeve of photos.
His mother stared back at him.
Grandpa had removed all photos of her from the house when she left, or so Zac had thought. His breath caught in his throat. ‘Why did you leave me?’ he whispered.
She was laughing in the photo, arm in arm with his grandmother. Their blonde hair shone brightly. The next one was of him as a baby, with Uncle Oliver cradling him. Oliver was beaming, as he always did, and Zac could hear his laughter echoing through the house, even now. He had brought love and laughter wherever he went. The next one was of Zac and Grandpa on a fishing boat. He was about nine years old, his mother and grandmother long gone, but he looked happy enough.
A large photo in a cardboard frame caught his eye, and he turned it over. It was Delilah, his grandmother, in all her glory: party-ready in black and white. Colour had been added by an artist, and it looked synthetic and impossibly old-fashioned. Her lips were red, her jumper pink and her hair golden, but the rest was sepia. It must have been the trend back then. He flicked through the rest, but they were all similar. All depicted Grandpa’s life in various stages of euphoria and collapse.
Then he spotted an open envelope. It contained a letter, and he thought about leaving it alone; it looked private. Indeed, everything in here was private, and he had no business snooping around. But snooping was the only thing that would get him answers.
One look couldn’t hurt, could it?
He opened it.
2 January 2003
My dear Xavier,
The pain I suffer is beyond measure. Always know that I love you and am with you every day and every moment. I take all the blame for our children’s folly. If I could turn back time, I would, but we reap what we sow.
There is nothing that I want more than to come back and sleep in our bed and walk in our garden, but we both know that cannot happen. We agreed that there had to be a clean cut or no cut at all, and that was unthinkable.
I think about you day and night. I know that Trinity wishes she could make everything better, and slowly she is accepting what she has done. I worry for her health.
Zachary is such a lucky boy and he will, under your supervision, thrive like the angel he is.
We will meet again.
All my love,
Boo X
Chapter 44
Xavier was even more protective of the new baby than he had been with his own. Delilah never would have thought it possible had she not witnessed it with her own eyes.
It wasn’t quite the scandal that he had fretted over. His daughter becoming pregnant out of wedlock was, he had to be reminded, the same thing he himself had celebrated not so long ago. It was true that he and Delilah felt married, but that wasn’t the point.
Trinity endured a long labour, and they were too far away from the hospital when her waters broke. Xavier point-blank forbade an air ambulance to Penrith, and so Delilah delivered her own grandchild.
Zachary.
She knew that as soon as Xavier saw him, he’d fall in love, and he did. The Fitzgerald nose, the wide, strong hands and the quiet self-assurance of one so tiny was intoxicating. There was no question that they’d stay at Wasdale Hall.
But, like her mother, Trinity soon became bored of the endless hills, the empty sky and the chirp of birds on the shore of the lake. Delilah took her daughter to London more often and Xavier assumed the role of parent for the second time in his life, and this time, he was good at it.
>
Not even Oliver could snap his sister out of her sulk.
‘She’s got everything she could possibly want right here,’ Xavier complained of his daughter’s selfishness and her blatant neglect of her son. Now they had two children who seemed to wander through life relishing the trappings of their father’s cash but doing little to seek the maturity that Xavier expected.
‘They’re spoilt!’ Delilah snapped during one of Xavier’s rants about the laziness of his offspring. She’d had enough of his self-delusion. After all it was his fawning that had turned the twins into brats in the first place. But, instead of staying at Wasdale to heal the gaping wounds caused by too much money and idleness, she took off to London whenever she could. Now that Xavier had his grandson, Delilah concluded, her time at Wasdale had come to an end, and she planned her escape.
It was a mere second, a blink in time, that eventually made up her mind. It wasn’t the fact that their romantic relationship had died years before, or that she was well aware that Xavier had the odd mistress – no, that was to be expected from a man like him. It was one glimpse, one word and one look that finally caused her to leave.
The sky over Wasdale Hall had turned grey, and the windows had all been closed and the fire lit. Oliver was nowhere to be seen, no doubt sleeping off a hangover after bedding one of the summer volunteers at the lake, who all seemed to find him charming and, most importantly, generous. Delilah had closed the door to the nursery and checked that Zachary was fast asleep, before making sure that Xavier had his final dark, rich espresso, which he took nightly before bed. She wondered that he ever slept, but it was what he did.
Accustomed to the ancient noises of the house, she was taken by surprise when she heard a gentle giggle coming from Trinity’s room. At first she dismissed it as a late-night phone call and none of her business, but it irked her. If her daughter was entertaining in her room without her knowledge, it really was the final insult.
She went to investigate, muttering under her breath, seeing visions of herself and Xavier raising their grandson in their twilight years, when they should be retired on the Amalfi coast. Nothing had gone to plan.
As she went along the hall and turned left onto the main landing, she heard the definite whispers of a hushed conversation, followed by the distinct tones of her daughter shushing someone to be quiet. One unplanned pregnancy was quite enough, she thought; another would be downright rude – and using her house to do it! She clenched her fists. She’d had enough.
She approached the door, and the giggling became brazen. Her daughter seemed to believe that illicit sex wasn’t invented until 1990, but she was about to be taught otherwise. Delilah hadn’t given Trinity permission to host a guest, and definitely not one in her room, late at night, that she’d never been introduced to.
She toyed with what to do. Should she barge in? Or give Trinity a chance to explain?
She heard moans.
That was enough! She turned the handle and opened the door.
Trinity was completely naked and sitting on top of a man, whose hands clenched her buttocks. It was a most confident display, and it left Delilah in no doubt that it was a regular occurrence.
Trinity spun round, and the look on her face was something that would haunt Delilah from that moment forward. Beneath her, being satisfied by her daughter, was a man whose face she knew well.
She’d watched him grow up, she’d supported him, protected him and nurtured him. Her own face crumpled in horror as she sought words to express the revulsion welling up inside her.
The face she stared into, and couldn’t free her mind of, was that of Oliver, her son.
But worse was to come, as Delilah turned slightly to her left and saw Xavier rushing along the hall.
‘What is it? Is everything all right? What’s happened?’
She had been unaware of the howl that had escaped her body as she’d recognised her daughter’s lover, and the significance of his identity became clear. How long? When? Why? And her thoughts turned in an instant to the secret paternity of her grandson, Zachary.
‘No, Xavier, don’t!’
But it was too late.
Xavier stood in the doorway, gaping at his children.
Delilah and Trinity left for London the following day.
Chapter 45
One week after the earl’s autopsy, in a lock-up on a council estate on the outskirts of Penrith, his safe was forced open by a certified locksmith in sterile conditions. Will Phillips was present, and Kelly waited for the phone to ring. She had other things to attend to so couldn’t be present for the opening.
Fingerprints would be long gone, and if what Zachary Fitzgerald had told Kelly about Brian Walker getting rid of the safe on the express orders of the earl was true, his prints would prove nothing anyway. However, they now had a sighting of Brian’s boat pushing out from Glenridding marina late on the afternoon of Friday 13 May, two days before the earl’s death. The witness specifically recalled the boat because it sat low in the water, and he’d waved to Brian to ask if he was all right. The man who’d come forward after the appeal around the lake was uncomfortable at dobbing in a local, and a loyal one at that, but it had stuck in his head. The circumstantial was adding up.
Brian had now been formally asked to come to the station in Penrith to record an interview. He’d waived his right to a lawyer, saying he didn’t need one. That was why Kelly had stayed put. She’d done some digging on Brian Walker. He’d left school at fourteen and drifted around between labouring jobs until he’d been taken on by Delilah in 1970. He’d been at Wasdale ever since. He had no record, no family and no mortgage. He stayed firmly where his bread was buttered. Linda, with her own property – a gift from the earl – a secure job and her connections to Wasdale, must be an attractive prospect to him, especially now that she was to inherit a cool £100,000.
Kelly thought about Brian’s weights bench, and how strong a man in his sixties needed to be to lift the earl’s safe. It made her shudder. She remembered what Ted had said about the hanging: someone would have had to lift the earl into place. The assisted suicide theory was looking more and more unlikely; why knock him out if he was willing, or had it been done to save him unnecessary pain? After all, Brian was a loyal servant. If he’d been tasked with something, he’d want to do it right.
She tapped her pen on the side of her mouth and looked at her phone every ten seconds. Finally it rang.
‘So?’ she asked.
‘It was all dry; it’s a bloody good safe.’
‘Thank you, I’ll remember that next time I buy one,’ Kelly said.
‘Sorry, guv. So I’ve logged twenty-five items. I’ve had a quick look and they’re mostly papers relating to the earl’s private assets, letters from family, or legal documents. His World War II medals were also in there, as well as some photographs.’
‘But you haven’t read them?’
‘I thought you’d want me to get them to the lab for processing first, to see if we could establish who handled them apart from the earl.’
‘I do, Will, thank you, but I need you to read them before we lose them for six weeks.’
‘OK, I’ll call you back.’
Kelly hung up, then called Johnny. She’d asked him to check out the location of Jack Sentry’s secret hideout on Place Fell. All he’d found was a battered old ruin that had seen better days and was locked up and abandoned. It was disappointing. It couldn’t even be used as a bothy.
She took the stairs for exercise and to work off some energy. Her adrenalin was pumping, and she was desperate for a run. She peered out of the windows as she went down the three flights of stairs, and stopped by one overlooking the car park at the rear of the building.
Amongst the usual Fiats, Audis, Fords and Toyotas was an old Land Rover that reminded Kelly of the three she’d seen parked outside Wasdale Hall. She looked at the plate; it was a Y registration and to her recollection, that dated it sometime in the 1980s. She carried on down.
Kate Umshaw was already in the interview room, and Kelly smelled the familiar whiff of Marlboros and realised that she fancied one. She greeted Brian and the interview got under way.
‘How did you get here today, Brian?’
‘One of the Land Rovers. The earl let everyone use ’em, it’s no bother.’ He was defensive. Kelly noticed a scratch on the side of his head and asked him how he got it.
‘Sheep got stuck in a fence and didn’t like me bothering her. They’ve sharp hooves if you take your eye off ’em.’
Despite Kelly’s instinct, as the interview went on she couldn’t help warming to the man. She had to constantly remind herself that the sixty-year-old sitting in front of them could easily be a murderer.
‘Does Dominic, Linda’s son, ever drive the earl’s cars, Brian? He seems to come and go as he pleases, and the earl was generous to him, after all.’
This caught him out.
‘I don’t know.’
Brian had a habit: when he was telling the truth, he embellished and elaborated; when he was nervous and unsure, or plain lying, he resorted to ‘I don’t know’, and that was all you got. It was as predictable and watertight as any theory Kelly had had. She asked him about where he’d gone to school and how he’d come into the employment of Delilah Mahler and Xavier Paulus Fitzgerald. Sure enough, Brian had endless stories to tell. But as soon as she asked about the earl’s safe, he replied, ‘I don’t know.’ It would show up on tape and was easily argued in court.
‘How is it that Dominic has means to live? Does his mother support him, or perhaps his father?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Did you kill the Earl of Lowesdale?’
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