Hostage to Fortune

by Carolyn McCrae

  “Start at the beginning.”

  “You’d better take some notes while I have everything in my head.”

  “Everything?” Skye asked as she moved the newspapers and opened her tablet.

  “Diane signs in with Gordon’s department religiously every week on a Friday at three in the afternoon. It is an essential part of her routine and she never, but never, misses it even when she hasn’t had a guest.”

  “I think calling people living in a government-funded safe house ‘guests’ is pushing it a bit.” Skye looked up from her tablet.

  “It doesn’t matter whether they are about to embark on a witness protection programme with new identities or recovering from war-inflicted wounds, Diane has always called them her guests. And whether she has one or not she always makes her Friday afternoon call. So Anne just said.”

  “She’s only been with that department for a month.”

  “It seems she’s got up to speed quickly. Anyway, Diane didn’t call in on Friday.”

  “And they’re worried?”

  “Very.”

  “Two days and they’re panicking?”

  “Apparently they’ve spent the last forty-eight hours exhausting all the usual channels—”

  “What are they?” Skye interrupted.

  “I haven’t a clue but whatever they are they have exhausted them.”

  “So?”

  “They want us to find her.”

  “Doesn’t she know we’re not a bloody missing persons bureau? Don’t they know we do historical research? That’s what we’re good at? Just because we found Alex doesn’t mean to say we’re going to be able to find every Tom, Dick or Harry they manage to lose.”

  “Calm down,” Fergal said, trying not to sound patronising.

  “I’m not calmed up. I just don’t think they know why we call ourselves Agents of History. We’re about history, right? The clue is in the name.”

  “I think there’s more to it than just finding Diane. Anne was very mysterious. She said finding Diane was the main priority, emphasis on the ‘main’ bit. When I asked her what other priorities there might be she said we would find out soon enough.”

  “That does sound mysterious,” Skye agreed reluctantly.

  “Anyway, I said we’d go down to Dartmouth and see what we could find out.”

  “When?”

  “She says she’s booked our hotel there from tonight so we’d better get a move on. It’s four hours’ drive even after we’ve got over the Solent.”

  “You know, Fergal, much as I love this house, and I’ve lived here pretty much all my life, I do think we’ll have to think about moving off the island if we’re going to spend more time working on the mainland.”

  Fergal looked at his wife of just over a year, trying to read if she was serious.

  The house had been her home since she was a baby. She had fought to stay there after the aunt who had raised her had died and her father, Sir Arthur, had told her to leave. It was only his very public disgrace that had embarrassed him into gifting it to his illegitimate daughter. Fergal had only lived there in the months since their marriage but he had come to love the house and he could not believe Skye would give it up lightly.

  “We’ll talk about that some other time,” was all he said.

  Two hours later they drove off the ferry at Lymington and headed inland.

  “The traffic is a bit lighter than the last time we made this trip,” Skye said, making conversation as they turned onto the A31.

  “Last time was high summer; schools are back this week.”

  “Radio?”

  “Why not?”

  The news headlines had just begun.

  ‘Warwick Eden, flamboyant and controversial playboy turned politician, recently elected MP and the leading figure in the aggressive political party, England Force, has been found dead. At present the police are saying his death is unexplained and will not confirm whether foul play is suspected.’

  “Wow!” Skye exclaimed when the newsreader moved on to talk about football.

  “I wonder what the real story is.”

  “Cynic!”

  “I wonder when he died. That’s the sort of news they want to keep under their hats for a bit, I should think.”

  “Perhaps there’ll be more on this later.” Skye took out her phone and searched the internet for several minutes as Fergal negotiated overtaking a string of caravans on a short stretch of dual carriageway.

  Once Fergal had taken one hand off the steering wheel, his signal that the driving was easy, she began. “I think I understand now.”

  “What?” he asked.

  “You know Gordon said something about ‘the main priority’ being Diane?”

  “Yes.”

  “Diane from Dartmouth?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ll never guess.”

  “What won’t I ever guess?” Fergal asked, his patience with his wife wearing thin.

  “Where Warwick Eden was found dead.”

  “Well? Oh come on, Skye, stop mucking about.”

  “He was found dead in Dartmouth.”

  “Dartmouth?”

  “And the American news websites are saying what the BBC can’t.”

  “Which is?”

  “That he was murdered.”

  Chapter 10: Skye and Fergal Investigate

  As soon as they had finished breakfast the next morning Fergal and Skye left their hotel to walk along the river Embankment for the half-mile into town.

  “We must try to ignore this,” Fergal said as they passed the green where Warwick Eden had been found. “We must concentrate on Diane. We mustn’t get distracted.”

  “Considering he was such a high-profile man there isn’t much to see, is there? Just a few bits of police tape.” Skye peered through some bushes as she walked past. “And a lot of trampled grass.”

  Fergal, peering over the bushes, had to agree. “It looks as though they had the crime scene pretty much sorted before they announced anything. There’s nothing to see now so let’s concentrate on why we’re here.”

  “Okay.”

  “I thought I’d concentrate on checking Diane’s movements in the days before she disappeared. There might be some clue in her house.”

  “Something on her computer?”

  “We can be sure Gordon’s mob will have looked at that already. I just hope they’ve left something for us to find.”

  “Gordon knows how clever you are with finding stuff on computers. That must be why they called us in.”

  Fergal smiled down at his wife. “You flatter me, dear girl. Somehow I think even I, with all my skills, won’t be able to find anything that his forensic technicians won’t have discovered already.”

  “But, dear boy,” she replied, reflecting his mock condescension, “I am equally certain you will.”

  “I just hope they remembered to put the front door key back where Diane always left it, hidden in the thick box plant in a pot by the front door, or we’ll spend the next few hours trying to break into her house, which might be a tad difficult. Ah, thank you, Anne, or whoever was in charge of this, here it is.”

  Fergal turned the key in the lock, pushed the door open and they walked into the immaculately tidy house. “It seems a lot longer than just a couple of months since we were last here, doesn’t it?”

  “Not even that long. We sorted Alex out at the end of July, so that’s not quite six weeks.”

  “Anyway, you go check upstairs and I’ll look around down here.” Fergal took command; he didn’t like to be proved wrong on anything, however trivial.

  “Anything?” he called up the stairs after a few minutes when he had heard nothing from Skye.

  “Nope. Nothing unexpected. The bed’s made, there doesn’t seem to be anything mi
ssing from any of the drawers or the wardrobe and the spare room is pristine. Everything’s perfectly as you’d expect if she’d just popped out for a couple of minutes,” she called down. “How about you?”

  “You’d better come back down here.”

  “Why? Have you found something?”

  “No, I just don’t want to keep shouting up the stairs.”

  Skye joined her husband who was standing on the balcony looking out over the busy River Dart.

  “It’s such a fantastic view from here,” she said as she tucked her hand through the crook in Fergal’s arm. “You can see everything that’s going on on the river.”

  Fergal looked out and for a minute they stood silently gazing at the bustle of activity on the Dart.

  “I’m wondering if nothing mysterious has happened to Diane, maybe she just wanted to get away for a bit. Small towns can get pretty claustrophobic after a while,” Skye said thoughtfully.

  “It’s not so small, but yes, it is a possibility that she just went away for a few days. But I doubt it. She would have taken some clothes and you said nothing was missing.”

  “I said it didn’t look like anything was missing. That’s different.”

  “Though even if she did go away she still could have called in. She still would have called in wherever she was. If she could, that is.”

  “Can you remember if she had a car? It’s only two months since we were here, talking to her. Do you remember if she ever mentioned having a car?”

  Fergal shook his head. “I can’t remember her saying anything about driving. Even if she did have I wonder where she would have kept it; there’s no garage here or on-street parking anywhere near.”

  “That’s something we should look into. Also public transport. What about the neighbours? No, forget that, I should think they’re all holiday cottages and the occupants wouldn’t know Diane if they bumped into her.”

  Fergal nodded. “I haven’t seen anything that makes me suspect she was forced to leave here against her will. If anyone has abducted her they had to have done it somewhere else.”

  “Why do you say that? Didn’t Anne just say she was missing? Did she say anything about kidnapping? If she did you didn’t tell me.”

  “No, she didn’t actually say it but why would he bring us in if he thought there was a simple explanation?”

  “Let’s look at the timeline.”

  Fergal sat down and took out his tablet. “Today’s Monday the fifth and the last time she was in contact with anyone was Friday twenty-sixth.”

  “That’s ten days ago, she could have gone anywhere in that time,” Skye pointed out.

  “But it doesn’t look like she’s been away all that time, look the Radio Times is open on last Wednesday so it stands to reason she was here then, doesn’t it?”

  “So you’re saying that the earliest she could have gone is Wednesday, possibly Thursday, just in time to miss her latest scheduled report.”

  Fergal input something onto the diary. “That was three days ago, Friday the second.”

  “It must be really unusual for her to miss a report for them to start worrying so quickly.” Skye frowned.

  “And they’ve already been here to have a check around. They must have done that on Saturday.” Fergal input another item on the diary on his tablet.

  “And then Anne called us in yesterday. That seems really quick to me.”

  “It’s entirely possible they know something they haven’t told us,” Fergal admitted. “I’m not sure I trust Gordon to be at all straight with us.”

  Skye nodded slightly. She wasn’t entirely sure she understood Fergal’s mistrust of Gordon Hamilton but she wasn’t going to argue about it. “Did you have a look at her computer? Any emails or anything?”

  “Of course I did and no, there were no emails or anything that said anything about a trip away, or meeting with anyone.”

  “What about phone messages? She still has an old-fashioned landline with messaging,” Skye pointed out.

  “I saw that too. And no, there were no messages.”

  Skye looked around her at the immaculately tidy house. “What else is there?”

  “I’m not sure. I don’t think we’re going to find anything more here when we haven’t the first clue what it is we’re actually looking for.”

  “We’ll have to tell Anne something when we ring in this afternoon,” she reminded him.

  “We’ll say everything looks perfectly normal, as she probably already knows, and we’ll suggest that maybe we should give Diane more time to make contact. We’ll say we haven’t found anything her mob missed when they looked over the house. We’ll ask if she had a car and if so does she know where it was kept; we’ll say we’re checking public transport, including the ferries and river boats, even that steam train on the other side of the river. But we’ll have to say we haven’t got a clue where she’s gone.”

  As they left the house, replacing the key in the box bush, Skye shook her head. “One day? They’ve panicked after just one day? It really doesn’t make sense.”

  “I wonder…” Fergal began.

  “What do you wonder?” Skye prompted when he didn’t explain what he was thinking.

  “I’m just wondering if Gordon’s wanting us down here in Dartmouth has more to do with the murder of Warwick Eden than the disappearance of Diane Hammill.”

  Skye didn’t answer, simply frowning while she concentrated on keeping her footing as she descended the steep and slippery hill.

  Ten minutes later they sat in a coffee shop reading the local paper. There were pages of photographs and descriptions of the Royal Regatta that, the previous week, had filled the town with visitors. There were descriptions of the racing, of the flypasts and of the crowds jostling through the stalls lining the streets and filling the marquees.

  “Who’d have thought that was only a week ago, there’s no sign of any of it now.” Skye turned the page to another double spread of pictures. “And there’s absolutely nothing about our Mr Eden, is there?”

  “The paper came out on Friday, dear girl, Warwick Eden wasn’t found until yesterday,” Fergal explained with emphasised patience.

  “Ah yes! I thought you’d say that. I’m just saying I can’t see him as the sort of man to hide himself under a bushel.”

  “That’s a very bad joke when the US websites are saying his body was found under an upturned dinghy.”

  “Really? I hadn’t seen that. Anyway, if he’d been in town he’d be all over the papers, wouldn’t he? Getting his picture in the papers is what he does. Even little local papers like this.”

  “Fair enough. So no, it doesn’t look like he was here last week though the papers are full of him now.”

  Skye picked up a national paper from the stack of papers on the window ledge. Across the front page was a picture of Warwick Eden and the single word Assassinated.

  “What does it say?” Fergal asked.

  “Warwick Eden, blah blah blah, body found by dog walker late Saturday night when his dog paid too much attention to an upturned dinghy. You were right then. Anyway, where was I? Ah yes. Police can confirm neither the time nor the cause of death, blah blah blah. They don’t seem to know much.”

  “Even if they know more they may not be able to print it. When we get back to the hotel I’ll check out on the internet what’s really going on.”

  “And find out more about Warwick Eden’s history?”

  “I’ll leave that bit up to you.”

  They agreed to work for just one hour before sharing what they had learned; it was Fergal’s preferred way of working so that Skye wouldn’t interrupt his concentration with unnecessary chatter.

  As Fergal read through the reporting in news media from around the world and across all forms of social media looking for anything sensible about the death of Warwick Eden, Skye foc
used on what was known of his life. They worked in silence, the only sounds in their hotel suite being the clicking of keyboards and the calling of the gulls.

  “Okay, hour is up. How’ve you done?” Skye sat back from the dressing table she had been using as a desk.

  “You first. What do you know now about Mr Warwick Eden that you didn’t know an hour ago?”

  “Right.” Skye looked at the notes she had made. “Are you ready?”

  “Ready.”

  “Warwick Eden was born in March 1971. He was the younger son of Stratford Eden, a man who had made a fortune in the money markets in the sixties with his company FP Transactions.”

  “FP?”

  “Apparently it’s short for Ferrum Pugnus.”

  “For you, who no doubt failed Latin at school, even if you ever took it, that translates as Iron Fist. And that is very interesting.”

  “Interesting? How?”

  “I’ll tell you later.”

  “Anyway, that makes sense, because the firm’s logo is a clenched fist. That reminded me of the flag of Corsica.”

  “Any Corsican connection to Stratford?”

  “I’ve no idea. I certainly didn’t find one. But don’t forget the iron fist was also the symbol of the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War.”

  “Any Spanish connection to Stratford?”

  “Not that I’ve noticed, but then I haven’t been looking.”

  “Then stick to what you have found out. You said he was the younger son, what happened to his older brother?”

  “His brother, Barford, was three years older than Warwick.”

  “Barford?”

  “Odd names. I don’t know what the reason is but all they all seem to be places in Warwickshire. Warwick and Stratford are, obviously, but I checked for Barford and apparently it is a village three miles south of Warwick and about six miles from Stratford. Obviously the family is obsessed with that area. Interesting also that the Member of Parliament for Warwickshire for many years was Anthony Eden.”

  “Any relation?”

  “I didn’t find any. It’s not that uncommon a name.”