‘I can’t stop, my people are here for you but I need to return to the station for a while,’ he said. ‘I just thought I’d let you know we identified the head. It belonged to a man called John Peterson. Does the name ring any bells?’
Suzy repeated the name in her head. Peterson. ‘Yes!’ She pushed past Julian, grabbed his arm and yanked him into the front garden, snow crunching under the soles of her fuzzy slippers. ‘The jeweller, Gerard, told his daughter to call someone named Peterson and have him take the ring to the secure safe.’
‘But he didn’t say where the secure safe was?’
Suzy shook her head. ‘It wasn’t at this Peterson’s house?’
‘No, that’s where I’ve just come from. If you think of anything, call me immediately.’ Julian touched her shoulder before turning away, his boots leaving deep imprints in the snow.
* * *
Stephen Prendergast had watched Alyona leave the house early that evening, from his private lounge window, and walk in the direction of the small cottage she occupied at the edge of the estate. With her nipped in waist and slim figure she resembled the type of girl he had lusted after as a young man. Beautiful, honed, and blonde had been the main traits he had looked for in a woman so it had come as a surprise when he had met and fallen in love with Tanya with her long, dark hair and petite, curvaceous figure.
He sighed heavily, remembering how his love for her had consumed him for so many years until this very year. He shrugged on his thick, padded walking coat and shoved his feet into his boots before plodding heavily down the staircase and into the night.
* * *
Thirty minutes after Alyona had cracked open the bottle of champagne, Maxim drove Alyona’s car into a parking space opposite the harbour wall. Alyona had not even changed out of her work clothes before demanding he drive her into town, she had not even finished her glass of champagne!
‘Do you think we should be doing this?’ he asked as they crossed the road towards the modern building. ‘What if there are security cameras?’
Alyona opened the entrance door and strode determinedly across the foyer. ‘It is not breaking in.’ She tapped the phone in her hand. ‘If I have the access code.’
Maxim followed Alyona into the lift and watch her press the button for the penthouse. ‘You risked a lot stealing that woman’s handbag. You could have been found out!’
Alyona shook her head. ‘I was quicker than her. Simon’s fiancée is not fit; she is not driven like me. She is soft and lazy.’
‘But the man who chased after you, did he see your face?’
‘He was faster than the woman but I only caught a small look at him. I do not think he is English. He has a look about him.’ She keyed in the access code when the lift reached the top floor.
Maxim stepped through the doors first and into the foyer of Simon’s apartment. ‘What kind of look?’
Alyona exhaled loudly. ‘I am not sure. I think I have seen him before. His face looks familiar to me. He is of no matter; he did not see my face. Now, let us search for my great-grandfather’s ring. It must be here. It is the last place to look.’
* * *
‘Bloody carol singers,’ Richard grumbled from the sofa. ‘Don’t give them anything.’
Arabella tut-tutted. ‘When did you turn into such a skinflint?’
Suzy looked up from where she was watching the television.
‘Since we lost all of our money.’ Richard stared pointedly at his wife. ‘Like I told you earlier.’
Arabella pursed her lips. ‘Since you lost it all.’
‘I never saw you watching what you spent,’ Richard countered. ‘You were always buying yourself new clothes.’
Arabella sniffed. ‘A woman has to make an effort with her appearance. We can’t all wear the same pair of jeans all of the time.’
Richard looked down at his legs. ‘There’s nothing wrong with a decent pair of denims. Besides you never complained because it meant more money for you to spend on yourself.’
‘Here.’ Suzy hastily delved into her handbag for her purse. ‘Give them this.’ She passed her mum some pound coins in an attempt to diffuse the situation.
‘Thank you, Suzanna. At least you didn’t inherit the skinflint gene.’ She swished past her husband and out to the front door.
‘Or the self-centred gene,’ Richard mumbled under his breath.
Suzy, already tuned out and listening to the local news talking about Simon and the other victims, wished they would both be quiet for five minutes.
* * *
Back at Simon’s apartment Alyona stamped her feet in annoyance. ‘I cannot believe it is not here!’
Maxim reached for her. ‘It may be time to admit you will never find the Koravkovia ring. Your father was a great man and even he could not locate it. Do not be disheartened.’
Alyona’s pale eyes sparked. ‘But I have found out so much more than my father did!’ She glared around the bedroom, searching for a glimmer of hope.
Maxim kissed Alyona, making soothing sounds. ‘We can still return to Koravkovia and be together. It is safe now for you to step from the shadows. No-one is concerned about your royal line.’
Alyona stared past his head, suddenly pushing him away. ‘There!’ she exclaimed. ‘Do you see it?’ She pointed to a corner within the wardrobes. ‘What is that?’
‘It’s an air vent.’ Maxim shrugged.
‘Inside the wardrobe? It serves no purpose. It makes no sense. The kitchen is on the other side of that wall. It is not a proper air vent, quick open it!’
Maxim dragged the desk chair over to the cupboard. ‘Hold this for me.’ He climbed carefully onto the plastic seat and reached for the white air vent cover. It easily lifted off in his hands.
‘Well?’ Alyona demanded impatiently. ‘Is there anything behind it?’
Maxim reached into the small recess and drew out a cardboard box, before jumping off the chair and passing the box to Alyona.
With shaking hands, Alyona took the box to the bed and sat upon it. Placing the box on her lap she turned to Maxim. ‘This could be the moment I find my great-grandfather’s ring.’
She pulled the lid off the box and tipped the contents onto the bed. ‘No! Photographs and nothing of importance. It is not here!’ She broke into tears.
Maxim retrieved a photograph that had fluttered onto the floor. ‘We should look here.’ He showed her the back of the picture. ‘Sycamore Lodge.’
Alyona snatched the picture from him and read the writing on the back. ‘Simon and me visiting Suzanna,’ Alyona said, ‘Nineteen eighty-six.’ She flipped the photograph over and studied the image on the front. ‘It looks like Simon and his fiancée have known each other for as long as we have known each other, Maxim.’
‘What, they played together when they were in nappies too?’ Maxim teased. ‘I remember you took longer to lose them than me!’
‘Focus, Maxim!’ Alyona waved the photograph at him. ‘That woman is Simon’s mother, Tatyana, can you not see that? The small boy must be Simon. The house? Well, we will go and see if we can get inside. I know exactly where it is.’ She slipped the photograph into her coat pocket.
* * *
From the opposite side of the road to Suzy’s house, hidden inside a darkened car away from the streetlights, Sevastian watched Arabella—he assumed it was Arabella—joyously swaying in time with the voices of the Christmas carol singers in the front garden. She turned as someone approached her from behind and smiled as Suzy drew into view.
Suzy looked, Sevastian thought, cute in her sweater, jeans, and fuzzy slipper-boots. He groaned resignedly, Suzanna Harte had wormed herself into his head.
Damn.
Sevastian jumped at a tap on his car window.
‘I was paying attention,’ he said, pressing the lock release for the passenger door.
‘Of course you were.’
‘Hurry up and get in, you are letting all the warm air out.’
The passenger seat cr
eaked under the new weight. ‘Any developments?’
Sevastian shook his head.
‘Just lots of Christmas carol singers, I see,’ the second person mused.
* * *
‘More bloody carollers,’ Richard groaned again. ‘Well, they can wait and want, your mother’s in the bath so they’re out of luck!’ He reached for his second mince pie of the evening.
‘Dad!’ Suzy reprimanded. ‘You promised Mum you’d give them a few pounds!’
Richard, spraying pastry from his mouth, replied, ‘They can get stuffed! I’ll have that couple of quid for another packet of mince pies!’
Suzy scooped two pound coins from the coffee table where her mother had left them and threw a mock-scolding look at her father. ‘I’ll do it then.’
The cold had permeated through the soles of her slippers by the time Suzy closed the front door. She could hear her mother splashing around in the bath so called for her dad, when there was not any response she ambled in the kitchen. The room was chilly, the back door wide open. Suzy frowned. Sticking her head out of the back door she gazed into the darkened garden.
‘No, I told you, she doesn’t know anything about it,’ Richard’s voice hissed from somewhere near the fence with the neighbouring property. ‘The newspaper article was nothing more than a ploy devised by the police.’
Suzy, wondering who her father was talking to, stepped out onto the snow. ‘Dad?’ He did not reply. Shielding her eyes against the light spilling out from inside so she could see better into the darkness, she called him again.
‘Yes, love?’ He padded into view, his slippers caked in snow.
‘Why are you out in the garden in your slippers?’
Richard pointed to Suzy’s feet. ‘I’m not the only one.’
‘Who were you talking to?’
‘No-one. I thought I heard a fox so I went to investigate.’ He padded past her and towards the kitchen. ‘Fancy a cuppa?’
Suzy nodded and followed him inside. ‘I’ll just stick these slippers in the airing cupboard to dry off, shall I take yours up?’
‘Thanks.’ Richard pulled off his slippers and handed them to Suzy. ‘Bring me down a pair of thick socks, would you? My feet are cold now.’
‘Sure.’
Suzy carried the soggy slippers upstairs and put both pairs next to the hot water tank in the airing cupboard. She put on another pair of her own slippers, and rummaged in the top drawer of the dresser in the small bedroom her parents were staying in until she found a thick pair of brown, chunky-knit socks for her father.
‘I found these socks in your room, Dad,’ she called, heading back towards the kitchen. ‘They’re a bit bobbly but they should keep you warm.’
The back door was open again so Suzy dumped the socks on a kitchen chair and stuck her head out into the night once more.
‘Are you out looking for that fox? You’re only wearing your socks now…get indoors!’
There was no response.
‘Dad?’
Still no answer.
Grumbling to herself, Suzy ventured out into the garden for a second time. ‘I hope you know I’m making my other pair of slippers wet for you…at this rate I’ll be needing your old walking socks!’
A security light flicked on from the neighbouring house. Suzy stiffened. Little old Mrs Robertson, the lady from next door, was spending December with her daughter in America. There should be no-one in her back garden. Telling herself it was probably the fox her father had been looking for which had set the security light off, Suzy walked along the edge of her garden, next to the low fence separating hers from Mrs Robertson’s.
‘Dad!’ Her voice rose hysterically.
Richard, slumped in a pool of light on the snow in Mrs Robertson’s garden with a knife protruding from his chest, pleadingly held out his hand.
Suzy raced back up the garden and down the side access, onto the street.
‘Help!’ she screamed, hoping the police officers were watching. ‘Someone help, my dad’s been stabbed!’
* * *
Across the road in his car, Sevastian reached for door handle.
‘No.’ His passenger laid a restraining hand on his arm. ‘This time it is my turn. You call this number.’ He handed Sevastian his mobile phone.
* * *
‘Don’t die, Dad,’ Suzy sobbed, ‘please don’t die. I can’t lose you too!’
Her mother, wailing uselessly, and dripping wet under her bath towel, flung herself on the snow beside Richard, her dog-slipper-clad feet incongruously cheerful.
Richard weakly touched Suzy’s face, her tears wetting the front of his jumper and merging with his blood.
‘I deserve it,’ he whispered.
‘What? Of course you don’t!’ Suzy sobbed.
‘I helped murder those people.’
‘Richard!’ Arabella screamed. ‘Be quiet!’
Suzy’s tears stopped abruptly. ‘What?’
‘He didn’t,’ Arabella wailed. ‘He’s lying!’
‘Of course he is, but why are you saying that, Dad?’
Richard struggled for breath. ‘I did it for you.’
‘What?’ Suzy didn’t want to believe her ears or eyes.
‘I’ve always loved you. Ever since you were three weeks old and I first held you in my arms.’ He moaned in pain.
Suzy was confused. ‘But you’re my dad, you held me before then.’
‘I’m not your real dad.’
‘Mum, you had an affair?’
Arabella shook her head. ‘I’m not your real mother.’
‘You’re telling me I’m adopted as my dad lies here dying?’ Suzy screeched. ‘I don’t believe you!’
‘I love you, Suzanna.’ Richard’s eyes flickered shut.
‘Mum!’ Suzy bellowed. ‘What the hell is going on?’
A loud commotion snatched Suzy’s attention as a team of paramedics and a couple of police officers jumped over the low fence. Suzy was forced aside, watching as they worked on her father, who she now knew was not her father. Suzy pulled Arabella to her feet and dragged her over the fence into her own back garden.
‘Explain,’ she ordered.
‘But Richard’s dying!’ Arabella wailed, clutching her blood-sodden dressing gown across her chest.
‘Now.’
Arabella’s lip wobbled. ‘Tanya Prendergast was your real mother but I don’t know who your father was.’
Suzy felt sick. ‘Simon’s mother is my mother? Oh my god, you let me have sex with Simon when you knew we were related all along? I’m going to throw-up, literally, I think I may die!’
Arabella manically shook her head. ‘You and he weren’t related, don’t be ridiculous. Tanya Prendergast wasn’t Simon’s mother. Stephen had an affair with his housekeeper Harriet. Harriet is Simon’s real mother. Stephen wanted a son and Tanya had suffered several miscarriages so he forced Tanya to adopt the boy as her own.’
Suzy struggled to absorb the information. ‘And Stephen definitely isn’t my father?’ She remembered the incident in his library. She swayed forward with nausea.
‘No!’ Arabella assured her. ‘Tanya and I were the best of friends and after the housekeeper gave birth to Simon, Tanya ran away from the UK. She was heartbroken Stephen had cheated on her. She returned, pregnant, and stayed with me until you were born. She left you with me and Richard when you were three weeks old. She wouldn’t tell me who your father was but made me swear never to tell Stephen of your true identity!
‘Tanya had told me of a ring given to her by your real father which she was to give to you when you turned twenty-five so you knew he hadn’t abandoned you through choice.’
Everything began to fall into place for Suzy. ‘The Vydrina Diamond.’
‘I didn’t know it was called that. She hid it in her mother’s crypt away from Stephen. So if that is where it was found, it is the ring from your father.’ Arabella turned back towards the neighbouring garden.
Suzy thought about it. Simon, up
set after his mother’s death—who he had never known wasn’t his real mother—had searched for clues about Tanya’s background and stumbled across the Vydrina Diamond. Scared, he had hidden it and unknowingly delivered it into the very hands it was meant for.
‘I must go to him...’ Arabella’s voice faltered. ‘My darling Richard!’
‘One last thing. Did Dad...err...Richard, really murder those people?’
Arabella looked frightened. ‘He only went along with Stephen because Stephen found out about you and the Vydrina Diamond and he threatened if Richard didn’t do as he said he’d kill us all! Stephen wants the diamond and he’ll stop at nothing to get it. I can’t tell you any more because I only found out about Richard’s involvement in the murders after that newspaper article appeared!’
‘Did Dad—Richard—kill Simon?’
Arabella shook her head. ‘No, of course he didn’t. He didn’t murder anyone, he just did as he was told to keep us all safe.’
‘Stephen killed his own son?’
‘I honestly don’t know what happened to Simon but where Stephen Prendergast is concerned I wouldn’t put anything past him. He’s a dangerous man, Suzanna, he always has been.’
* * *
‘Give me the Vydrina Diamond.’
Suzy standing in her back garden, watching down the side access as Richard was carried out on a stretcher into an awaiting ambulance was suddenly pulled off her feet and dragged backwards by her jumper She struggled until she was released, falling over. ‘Stephen,’ she said from her position in the snow. ‘Last time I saw you, you were much gentler with me.’
‘That was before I found out you have what I’m looking for. The Vydrina Diamond. I want it,’ Stephen said.
‘I don’t have it.’ Suzy shuffled backwards, her bottom already beginning to numb.
Stephen reached forward, grabbing a handful of Suzy’s hair. ‘The newspaper said differently.’
Unveiling Lies (Eastcove Lies Book 2) Page 8
